


Pajamatory

by apparitionism



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F, Hollywood musical AU, The Pajama Game (1957), no songs though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 02:59:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3192695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparitionism/pseuds/apparitionism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1950s Hollywood musical AU, based on 1957’s <i>The Pajama Game</i>. When seamstress Myka Bering first sees H.G. Wells, the new pajama factory superintendent, she feels instantly drawn to this mysterious stranger—and the stranger feels the same way about Myka. But are they doomed to gaze longingly at each other across a labor/management divide? Hmm.... I wonder... (I promised JDaydreamer that I would bring this over from Tumblr when she posted a new part of All for Love—which she did, so I am.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Herewith, an AU based on an actual text as opposed to being simply set in a time period. This is a Bering-and-Wells adaptation of the Doris Day movie _The Pajama Game_ (1957), which was of course itself an adaptation of the stage musical, which was in its turn an adaptation of a novel; I’m setting it in that weirdly idealized movie-musical version of the 1950s, though with perhaps a slightly darker overlay (because of dark being artistic, or something), and ignoring certain social realities of the time while keeping others that are useful to me. I have changed the movie’s characters, and their relationships and motivations, with wild abandon. I will also not be using the songs, except in sentiment, but if you would like to imagine B &W dueting? That is entirely up to you. (I suspect neither can carry a tune; still, their rendition of “Small Talk” would, I also suspect, be all kinds of playful/hot.) Anyway, I’m pretty sure you won’t need to know Pajama Game to get this. Also, I've preserved my tumblr intros and tags, just because.
> 
> TLDR: 1950s Bering and Wells making out in widescreen Technicolor!

The main entrance to the Sleep-Tite Pajama Company headquarters and factory seemed designed to appear industrially forbidding—a towering, steam-belching edifice of dark brick. Yet as far as Helena Wells was concerned, it might have been a circus tent, for all the difference it made. She was here to do a job.

Of a young man having a smoke outside the door, she asked, “Where is Mr. MacPherson’s office located, please?”

“Turn right as you go in, then through the sewing room,” he said. He flicked his cigarette to the ground and stepped on it. “You here to sew?”

“No,” Helena said. “A rather different position.”

He looked her up and down. “Well, whatever it is, you’ll look good doing it.” Helena almost laughed out loud. What a silly boy—well, all right, he was a man, but he did not seem particularly grown into that status. “I’ll show you to the office,” he went on. “I’m Steve, by the way. Steve Jinks. But they call me Prez, because I’m the president of the local.”

“Are you indeed,” Helena said. Interesting. A union chapter with a boy president. Her task in this Midwestern American factory could end up being far easier than she had thought when James called and asked for her help. She nodded to Steve Jinks—she would not call him Prez—as he held the door open for her. He winked, and she held back another laugh.

****

Myka Bering’s sewing machine hummed and clacked, heating up as she sewed, cooling down slightly as she reached for the next set of garment pieces. The familiar fwip-fwip of the needle sliding into and up from the fabric, its rhythm echoed by all the other machines in the room, provided a comforting backdrop against which her thoughts could range: in her purse, a book waiting to be read during her lunch break; in the pocket of her smock, a pad of paper full of calculations related to the raise the union had been requesting for months now—the raise they all needed, but never seemed closer to receiving.

The book and the calculations pulled her in opposite directions. She still sometimes entertained thoughts of college, night classes perhaps, and beyond—but she was getting older, she knew, and her world increasingly revolved around the factory. Her work. The union. The practicality of the hum and clack rather than any loftier ideas.

She sighed and looked up for a moment. Steve was weaving his way determinedly through the sewing and cutting tables, and for a moment Myka wondered if there were some pressing union business she had forgotten to handle.

But then Myka saw that someone was following him. A woman. A woman with dark hair and dark eyes—their darkness, Myka thought, was like a polished, perfected version of Myka’s own brown hair and green-brown eyes. They were staring at each other, Myka and this stranger, and Myka lost her grip on the pieces she was sewing. She looked down, looked back up, and the stranger was closer.

“Hi, Myka,” Steve said as he walked past.

Myka couldn’t speak. She nodded, and while she hoped Steve would accept that as meant for him, she really could not tear her gaze away from the woman. Who nodded back at Myka. Her head turned back a bit as she passed Myka’s table, as if she, too, wanted to hold their connection for as long as possible.

She watched them go into the administrative office. Then: “Get back to work!” was roared into her ear by Artie Nielsen, the floor supervisor. She looked down at her machine to see the pieces of fabric stitched haphazardly together. She had no idea how, or when, that had happened.

****

Once the union man—the boy—had taken his leave, James shook Helena’s hand heartily. “How wonderful that you’re here at last!” He turned to a quite severe black woman seated at one of the desks. “This is Mrs. Frederic, my assistant,” he said to Helena. “And Mrs. Frederic, this is my dear friend and colleague H.G. Wells.”

“Hello, Mrs. Frederic,” Helena said, answering the woman’s nod with one of her own. “But James, we must save our pleasantries for another time. I need to get started: I arrive at the factory, I get to work. If they see that that is my approach, they will understand what I expect. So they will be less likely to balk as my expectations rise  That is, if you’re serious about my presence here.”

“Of course I’m serious. I cannot possibly give them this raise about which they will not cease making noise. You must wring more and better work out of them—out of the factory as a whole.”

“And what restrictions are you placing on me?” On their first acquaintance, many years ago in London, James had requested that Helena in essence play puppet master, hiding the fact that she was the one running the operations of a factory that made radios. In short order, the factory began to make far better radios far more quickly—and no one but James knew that Helena was responsible.

“None. Well, at least, not at first; we shall see what transpires. Do what you must.” More softly, he said, “Break the union if you have to. In fact, it would be quite helpful to me if you could indeed break the union. Thorns in my side, all of those agitators.”

“That boy who brought me in here? I hardly believe he can be much of a problem.”

“First, don’t underestimate that young man. He may seem a bit coarse, but there is a magnetism to him. And second, he does not work alone. You’ll see.”

****

Myka saw Artie jump when Mrs. Frederic tapped him on the shoulder. “How can I make sure these people stay on schedule if I’m called away?” he complained, looking down at his ever-present stopwatch. Mrs. Frederic just gazed at him, then turned and strode away. He followed her into the administrative office.

“What’s going on?” Myka heard from the table to her left.

“I don’t know, Pete. Or, I know as much as you do.”

“Which is zero.”

“Which is zero,” she agreed. Pete was the only man who worked in the sewing room—because he was good at it. He was the best, in fact, and even Myka, who took huge pride in her work, had no trouble giving him the credit he deserved. Some of the guys, and some of the girls, would sometimes rib him about doing “women’s work,” but he was big and strong enough to give them what-for. The guys at least. The girls, he just sweet-talked, and they fell in love with him, mostly. The only guy who’d ever really taken it too far was Steve—and Pete had had to put a fist to his jaw over it. “I didn’t want to hit him,” Pete had said, “but when a guy starts talking about your mom…”

Myka had known Pete and the rest of his family for almost forever, and Mrs. Lattimer was definitely someone you would want to be very complimentary about. Regardless of Pete and his fists—but Steve was such a hothead, running after girls, stirring up trouble with other men.

And yet a hothead, a charismatic hothead, was exactly who they needed to head up the union right now.

“Hey hey hey,” Pete said. “Who _is_ that looker, anyway?”

Emerging from the office were Mr. MacPherson, Artie, and the mystery woman. This time, Myka stopped her machine. Just stopped it. She didn’t want to have to redo anything else today.

Artie shouted, “Ladies and Pete!” The clacking slowed, stopped. “This is the new factory superintendent, Miss H.G. Wells! And if you have anything to say about that, don’t! Now get back to work, and don’t waste any more time!” He clicked his stopwatch. An answering tap, of the ladies’ and Pete’s feet on their pedals, signaled the renewal of the hive-like hum.

“New superintendent?” Pete asked Myka. “What happened to the old superintendent?”

“I’m pretty sure he died. He was ancient. I think I saw him once.”

“Well, she sure isn’t ancient,” Pete said, “and I’d sure like to see her more than once, if you know what I mean.”

“Pete, I always know what you mean.” But Myka was thinking that indeed, the new superintendent was in no way ancient. And she was also thinking that she, too, might like to see her more than once.

****

It took Helena all of two days to, as James had put it, “see” about the union. She was on her back underneath a broken steam presser, wrenching a newly machined part into place.

“Superintendent Wells!” she heard. A female voice, one she semi-recognized—yes, it was Mrs. Frederic.

“Just a moment,” she said. Why was the part not… ah, she needed more spacers. She slid out from under the machine. “You,” she said to one of the several men gathered around the machine. Small and rabbity, he would perhaps move faster than most of the others had shown themselves capable of. “I need three—no, four—spacers from the machine shop.” He just stood there. Not an unusual response, and Helena was rapidly losing her patience with this kind of thing. She grabbed him by his shoulders, turned him bodily around, and shoved him in the correct direction. “Four spacers!” she shouted. “Get them now!”

His look back at her suggested she had sprouted horns. “You _pushed_ me!” he exclaimed. “You’re not supposed to do that!”

“If that is what it takes to make you move, then I shall do that and more,” she said. “And to all the rest of you as well!” They moved away, muttering.

Mrs. Frederic shook her head. “That may have been a mistake.”

“I don’t care,” Helena said. “Why can they not do an honest day’s work? That is all I ask.”

“I suspect that is not _all_ you ask,” Mrs. Frederic said.

Helena shook her head. “You’re right. I ask also that work be done _well_.” She took up a rag draped over the machine and wiped a bit of grease from her left hand.

“And there might be the rub. By the way, Mr. MacPherson wants to see you, but I can tell him you’re busy.”

“Thank you,” Helena said. “A half-hour, perhaps? This machine will not get the better of me for long.”

****

Helena did not get her half-hour. She got nineteen minutes. At that point—she was under the machine again—she heard the footsteps of several people. Then she heard “Superintendent Wells!” And that voice… that voice was also female, but that voice, she did not know.

She slid out. She removed the screwdriver she’d had clenched between her teeth. Then, still lying on the floor, she looked up—directly into the eyes of a beautiful girl. No, not just _a_ beautiful girl; the beautiful girl from the sewing room, the one who had caught her eye that first day. “You,” Helena said. And, “Hello.”

“Would you like a hand up?” the girl asked.

“Would I… oh.” Helena realized she was still supine. “Yes, I believe I would.”

The girl reached her hand down, and Helena took it. The grip with which her hand was held was surprisingly strong.

Standing, Helena did not drop the girl’s hand immediately. She did, however, look down at where they were still joined. “Oh my lord,” she said. “I had no idea I’d got my hands so—” For dark grease was smeared all over her fingers and, now, on the hand of… “But we haven’t been introduced.”

“I’m Myka Bering. I work in the sewing room—”

“I know; I’ve seen you.”

The girl blinked. Took a breath. “Yes. I’ve seen you, too. But also, I’m the head of the union’s grievance committee.”

“Oh,” Helena said. “Grievance.” She was finding it difficult to focus on what Myka Bering was actually saying; she kept looking at her eyes. Her very green eyes. They caught the light, and in doing so, caught Helena as well.

“Yes,” Myka Bering said. “This is the rest of the committee. Because there’s been one.”

“A grievance,” Helena said.

“Yes.”

Helena reasoned that it was most likely too soon for her to declare to Myka Bering that she was the most beautiful creature Helena had ever seen. There was also the rest of the grievance committee to consider, but Helena thought that she and Myka Bering both were doing an admirable job of ignoring their presence so far.

Then one of the men—ah, the large one also from the sewing room—said, “Since the cat’s got Myka’s tongue, I’ll tell you: you shoved Joe Valda.”

Myka Bering found her voice. “You are not supposed to strike an employee,” she said. “It’s against the rules.”

“I didn’t _strike_ him,” Helena said. “I indicated that I wished him to move in a particular direction. At a particular rate of speed. How can that possibly be against the rules?”

“If you’d read the rule book, you’d know,” Myka Bering said.

She was quite solemn, this Myka Bering, with her mesmerizing green eyes. Helena suddenly wanted nothing more than to make her smile, make her laugh. So, as if absentmindedly, she drew her begreased hand across her forehead.

It worked. Myka Bering gave a small chuckle. Then she smiled fully and said, “You… um. You just… your face.”

Helena grabbed the bit of cloth that she had hung back on the machine. She held it out to Myka Bering. “If you’ll clean it off for me, I’ll read the rule book,” she said.

“That sounds to me like management wanting to make a deal with labor,” Myka Bering said. “For that, you need a different committee. Come on, boys, I don’t think we’re going to make any progress here.”

With a certain amount of grumbling, the men filed out.

“Are you a part of that deal-making committee?” Helena called after Myka Bering.

At which, Myka Bering turned around and said, “Information about union groups? That’s in the rule book too.”

But the look she gave Helena… Helena’s knees very nearly gave out. She sat down on the floor and, this time truly absentmindedly, wiped at her face with the rag. _Break_ the union? Gaze into the union’s eyes, more like. Listen to the union talk about rules or grievances or committees or anything else the union cared to talk about. And then back the union up against a wall and… 

No. Helena shook herself. She was here to do a job. She was going to fix this steam presser, and then she was going to see to whatever it was that James had decided to be concerned about next.

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original part 1 tumblr tags: I am the only person in the world who has such a thing for Pajama Game, and it's mostly for the songs, which I can't even use, and I really am taking the storyline as a suggestion/outline only, but hidden in the movie's cheeseball presentation, is a kind of knowing-yet-swoony sexiness, that I want to not emulate exactly, but maybe try to sit next to, or tap on the shoulder of, and ask if it would like to go out sometime


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know how in Moulin Rouge (the Baz Lurhmann movie), they keep yapping about how it’s a story about love? Most musicals are: and that love has to be strong enough to justify otherwise rational people breaking into song. Musicals are also about compatibility—vocal compatibility, obviously, in the case of singing, plus the broader physical compatibility of singing AND dancing. The instantaneous nature of the connection between two people is often made manifest by their ability to perform a number together perfectly, having JUST MET. This is perhaps in some way relevant to our amorous pajama adventure.

Several days later, in the lunchroom, Myka crunched her apple and tried to concentrate on her book. The girls around her, plus Pete, were making plans for the upcoming company picnic.

“Ten days to go till the best day of the year!” Pete crowed.

Steve walked over. “Ten days till we might be able to get something done, union-wise, you mean. All anyone wants to talk about now is that stupid picnic.”

Myka looked up. “You might as well enjoy it. It’s the one thing management does for us.”

Pete snorted. “I think management might do something for _you_.”

That caught Steve’s attention. “What’s he mean, Myka?”

“Nothing,” Myka said. She turned back to her book.

Pete said, “Myka seems to like the new superintendent.”

Steve shot Myka a look. “Think she likes you?” he asked.

“I… don’t know.” Myka wished she would, hoped she did, thought she might… but she certainly wasn’t going to say that out loud. Not to anyone, not yet, and certainly not to Steve.

“Because it could help us. If we had some line into management. Some way of getting some info we know is for real. We gotta be smart. We need a look at the books, or at least, some way of getting to someone who gets to look at the books.”

Myka said, “I wouldn’t want to do that. Even if I could, I wouldn’t want to do that. Not to her.”

Pete made kissing noises.

“Not to anybody,” Myka amended. “It’s sneaky.”

Steve said, “Sometimes you have to be sneaky to get results. Listen, I gotta get back to the stockroom. But you should think about it, Myka. Think about how it’d help the union.”

“You’d think he’d have a problem with it,” Pete said once Steve was gone.

“Not if he really thinks it would help the union,” Myka said. “He’d date _you_ if he thought it would help the union.”

Pete guffawed. “Steve would punch _himself_ out at the idea of dating me. Even though I am amazing to look at, right? I’m no ninety-eight-pound weakling, that’s for sure!” He flexed his muscles. Myka rolled her eyes, but most of the other girls sighed.

They all began gathering their things; no one wanted to be the last person who made it back to the sewing room, because Artie usually hung over that person all afternoon to make sure they weren’t having a slow day in general. “See, you aren’t interested in my excellent muscles, like the rest of the girls are, because you _do_ like the new superintendent,” Pete said to Myka as they started walking.

“Quit it,” Myka said.

“Don’t deny it, Myka,” said Amanda. She ran the machine on the other side of Pete, and he’d dated her when he first started working at the factory.

“You do get a glow about you when she walks by,” Kelly added. Pete had started dating Kelly right after Amanda told him she wanted someone who wanted to settle down. (“No settling down for me!” he’d exclaimed.)

“Love comes at last to Myka Bering,” Deb said in a sing-song voice. Now Pete was seeing Deb, because Kelly was going to night school. She wanted to be a veterinarian; her classes were keeping her busy. (“She still likes me, though!” Pete had assured everyone.)

“You all are nuts,” Myka pronounced. “I set eyes on her for the first time two weeks ago.”

“You sure did set your eyes on her,” Pete said.

“I’ve never seen anybody set their eyes on another person quite like that before,” Amanda agreed.

Pete went on, “And oh, boy, when we went to talk to that new superintendent about Joe Valda and his grievance!”

“What happened?” Kelly asked.

“I’ll tell you what happened: sparks flew!”

Myka, who was walking flamboyantly in front of all of them, very consciously _not turning around_ , now did turn around. She walked backwards as she said, “Pete, knock it off! That did not happen! Nothing happened, nothing’s happening, and nothing’s going to happen!”

“Um,” Pete said. “You might wanna—”

“What is it _now_?” Myka demanded.

She discovered what it was when she began to whirl around to walk forward again—and ran straight into Superintendent H.G. Wells. With some force. “Oh!” Myka exclaimed. “I’m… sorry.”

“I’m not,” said the superintendent. “Unless you’re hurt.”

“I’m not,” Myka said. “Are you?”

“I feel fine.”

She was holding Myka by the elbows, as if to steady them both, as if either of them might lose their balance at any moment. And that was… Myka swallowed. That wasn’t too far from the truth, at least not on Myka’s side of things. She didn’t want to move, ever again; all she wanted was to stand here, this close, or closer still, because H.G. Wells might tighten her grip and pull Myka toward her…

No. It was a crazy thought. Myka said, “I have to get back to work.”

“Do you? I mean, yes, I suppose you do. Have to. Or should.” Now she was the one who sounded flustered. She dropped her hands, and all Myka wanted was to have them on her again. “Good afternoon to you all,” she said, and walked away.

Myka tried very hard not to look at Pete, or Amanda, or Kelly, or Deb.

“Yeah,” Pete finally said. “No sparks there.”

Amanda said, “You definitely could not start a forest fire with those nonexistent sparks.”

Deb said, “That sure did not look anything like the sky on the fourth of July.”

Kelly threw in, “Myka, do you remember the high school’s annual bonfire? How high those flames would get, and everybody would ooh and aah over it? This was nothing like that.”

Myka wanted to yell at them. She wanted to yell that they were wrong—but they weren’t wrong, and in fact, what she really wanted to yell was that they were right, that those sparks were starting a fire, that she was already burning, was already burned, in more ways than one. What she finally said was, “Have your fun. But in the end, it doesn’t matter at all, because she is the superintendent.” And Myka thought that she herself would do very well to start keeping that fact uppermost in her mind.

****

Helena would rather have been stuck under a broken steam presser again than stuck in the office listening to Mrs. Frederic and Artie Nielsen argue. She was going over some shipping information, comparing it with orders received. She couldn’t get the numbers to balance out, and she’d asked Claudia Donovan, the young clerk who fetched and carried for James, to get a particular account ledger for her from the locked bookkeeping area in the basement. Claudia had said, “I don’t think I should do that. He’s very particular about those books.”

“Please?” Helena had asked. “For me? I’ll let you help me finish up with the hydraulic system later today…” She had been sure this would work, for Claudia’s interest in, and facility with, machines—an interest that had gone unindulged up till now, an omission that Helena found almost criminal—was nearly as great as Helena’s own.

“Well… okay. But just for a little while, and then I have to put it back.” Her face shining with a huge grin, she had made to leave the office.

She was met by Artie Nielsen. “Why are you dressed so provocatively?” he demanded.

For Artie Nielsen was not only the floor supervisor. He was also Claudia Donovan’s foster father. Her distrustful, suspicious, “smothering” (Claudia’s word) foster father.

Claudia, who was wearing a dress so modest she could easily have been mistaken for a nun, said, “Ugh, Artie, you saw what I was wearing this morning at breakfast. It was fine with you then.”

“You’ve undone the buttons!”

“I’ve undone one button, because it’s a hundred degrees in here,” Claudia said. “Would you rather I die of heatstroke?”

“If it would make those slavering packs of delinquent boys leave you alone? Then yes.”

Claudia turned to Helena. “This is why I try not to make waves with Mr. MacPherson. I get plenty of grief from _elsewhere_.” She flounced out.

“Mr. Nielsen,” Mrs. Frederic said. “Claudia does fine work around here. You should not be so harsh with her.”

“If I’m not harsh, who will be? Someone’s got to protect that girl from the… bad element. You know what the rough characters who work in this factory can be like!”

“I know that she has never done anything more serious than eat lunch with that sweet boy Todd.”

“When did she eat lunch with what sweet boy Todd!?” Artie roared.

Helena tried very hard to concentrate on her columns of figures. Eventually Artie’s rage began to subside, and he asked Mrs. Frederic an actual work-related question, which she answered. Quietly. Then she said, just as quietly. “You should trust her, Mr. Nielsen. Or at least pretend to, when you are at work. Your displays are unprofessional.”

Artie looked at the floor. “You’re right about that,” he said. “I’ll try harder. Here at work, anyway.” He pulled his stopwatch out of his pocket and stepped back out to the sewing room.

Helena was glad he was no longer in the office, regardless of any of his words to Mrs. Frederic, when Claudia came back with the account book. “Did he go too crazy?” she asked, dropping the book onto the desk where Helena sat. “Mrs. F?”

“The usual,” Mrs. Frederic said. “I did, however, mention Todd’s name. As you asked.”  
  
“Thanks.”

Helena said, “I don’t understand. Why would you want your young man’s name mentioned?”

“First,” said Claudia, “he isn’t my young man. I mean, who knows someday, but right now? No, I just like talking to him—he’s smart, and he likes it that I am, too. But with Artie, inoculation helps. You start him small. Once he’s blown up a few times about something, it’s harder for him to get quite as worked up about it.”

“You’re quite clever,” Helena told her.

“Thanks, but that kind of thing is mostly Mrs. F’s idea. She’s known him a lot longer than I have.”

Mrs. Frederic said, “Handling Artie—Mr. Nielsen—is a matter of knowing when to push which buttons. Woe betide those who get the sequence wrong, however.”

“He really is like a little angry robot, isn’t he?” Claudia laughed.

Helena smiled. She liked these women. She liked this factory, although every single mechanical system in it seemed ready to break down at any given moment. She sighed and looked at the ledger. She knew she needed to make some sense of these figures… but the hydraulic system would be so much more interesting…

James burst in then, cursing at salespeople in general, and pajama salespeople in particular. “How difficult can it possibly be,” he demanded, “to sell pajamas? Who does not need sleepwear?” He caught a glimpse of the desk where Helena had been about to open the book. “What is that doing here?”

“Oh,” Helena said. “I just needed to reconcile these data with—”

“Claudia!” he said sharply. “I have told you time and again that these books should not be left lying around! Take this back downstairs and lock it up at once!”

Claudia gave Helena an “I told you so” stare. “Yes, Mr. MacPherson,” she said meekly. She grabbed the book and whispered to Helena, “But I still get the hydraulics lesson, right?”

“You do,” Helena whispered back.

James said, “I have a lunch meeting with those representatives from the western region department stores. Helena, can you maintain the fort while I’m away?” He smiled in a way that was almost impish. “Without, perhaps, instigating any more grievances? I received a memo from that committee last week about an unresolved incident: I understand you were accused of manhandling a maintenance man.”

“I manhandled no one. But you do want the factory to function, do you not?”

“Indeed. But perhaps you could keep your more violent tendencies under wraps for the time being. I believe I instructed you to ease union relations, not provoke further hostilities.”

Helena said, “That is true. Those were your instructions.”

“Excellent! I’m so glad we understand each other. Now, since I’ll doubtless return bearing news of many, many new orders, you must make sure the factory can handle it all, my dear!”

“Hm,” Helena said as he left. “Mrs. Frederic, would you be so kind as to summon Miss Bering, of the grievance committee?”

Mrs. Frederic arched a regal eyebrow. “I have heard that you have something of an eye for Miss Bering.”

“I can’t imagine why you heard that. Or when.”

“Don’t underestimate the speed with which gossip moves through this factory. How long have you been here? Two weeks?”

“Nearly three, now.”

“And already you have an eye for Myka Bering, are feuding with Steve Jinks, and have engaged in fisticuffs with Joe Valda. Soon also, apparently, you will be usurping power from Mr. MacPherson, firing Artie, and sending Claudia into exile in the maintenance department.”

“What? Those things—well, in the main—are completely untrue!”

“That’s why they call it gossip, Miss Wells.” Mrs. Frederic stood. “I’ll send your Miss Bering in.”

“She isn’t _my_ —oh, never mind,” Helena said as Mrs. Frederic, after another knowing lift of a brow, exited the office.

****

Myka was stitching along, making excellent progress through a batch of silk pajamas—silk was exceptionally hard to manage, with its deceptively soft slither through the machine, so Pete usually got those pieces, but this was a particularly large lot—when Mrs. Frederic said from behind her, “Superintendent Wells wishes to see you. About the grievance.” And sure enough, there the silk went, bunching under the needle, catching Pete’s eye, making him shake his head. Mrs. Frederic assured Myka that she would “see to” Artie, and that she herself would be on another errand for “some minutes, at least.”

Pete winked at Myka and said, “Some minutes, huh? Well, okay, if Mrs. F can help you out, so can I. I’ll untangle your sad attempt at silk and make it all pretty for you. Take your ‘some minutes.’”

Myka started to say, “Stop it.” But she had been so good, all this week; she had carefully walked facing forward at all times so as not to run into anyone unexpectedly, and she had taken pains to not allow herself to look up when Superintendent Wells walked by. So couldn’t a few minutes in her company be Myka’s reward for all that vigilance? “Okay,” she told Pete. “Thanks.”

It would be just a few minutes. Myka now had a plan: she would take those minutes, she would enjoy them without guilt, and then she would pretend they had not happened.

****

Helena intentionally did not look up at the tap on the office door. She kept her eyes on the desk blotter in front of her. She did not look up when she said, “Come in, please,” and she did not look up when Myka entered the office and pulled the door closed.

And then all she wanted to do was look, so she did. And Myka was still the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. The only thing Helena could think to say was, “This is the first time we’ve ever been alone.”

“We’re not alone. There’s an entire factory around us. What do you want?” Myka asked softly.

And again, Helena said the first thing she thought, which was, “I want you to look at me. You never look at me anymore.”

Myka smiled. “Maybe I’m just focused on my work.”

“Focus on me instead.”

“Now you’re trying to trap me,” Myka told her. “Labor isn’t that easily distracted, Miss Wells.”

“Call me Helena. Please.” She wanted to hear Myka say that name, use that name; she wanted her to _have occasion_ to use that name.

“What about ‘H.G.’?”

And Helena, who had always preferred to be called by her initials, even insisting that her parents do so, even when she was small, said, “That’s not for you… that’s for the factory.”

“Are we somewhere else suddenly?”

“I feel like I am,” Helena said, honestly. “I certainly want to be.”

“And where am I?”

“You are there too. Wherever it is. With me.”

Myka shook her head. “No. I’m here. I’m still here. Because I’m the grievance committee, and I can tell you that the incident, it’s taken care of, all right? Joe shouldn’t have made trouble. You’re in the clear.”

Helena gave in. “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t mean to keep you from your work.”

Myka nodded and turned to go. Then, to Helena’s great surprise, she turned back and said, “Helena.”

Stunned to have heard Myka say her name, Helena just sat there.

“I wasn’t going to tell you, but… your face.”

“What about my face?”

“Look at your hand.”

Helena looked at her hand, and… yes, dirty again.

“You did it again,” Myka said. She stepped slowly across the office, around the desk, ending up next to Helena. She took the edge of her smock and dabbed at Helena’s cheek, moving it up to her temple, her forehead.

Helena just sat, dumbstruck. They were nearer to each other than they had ever been. She could have turned her head slightly and kissed Myka’s hip.

Myka asked, “What were you working on?”

“The hydraulic system.”

“You should pay more attention to where your hands are.” But Myka’s hands were moving more slowly, more gently against Helena’s face.

“I’m not sure I should. Not if it gets you this close to me.” Helena’s own hands were dangerously close to rising to Myka’s smock, rising to grasp that smock and pull Myka down…

“We have to work together,” Myka said. Now her hands were still; she was simply holding Helena’s face.

“I want us to work together.”

Myka laughed, and the moment broke. She took her hands away. “I’m sure you do,” she said.

“Please.” Helena touched the smock now, hooked two fingers in its front pocket.

“You’re management. I’m the grievance committee.”

Now Helena did pull. Just a bit. “I’m Helena. You’re Myka.”

“Not here. Not now.”

“But somewhere? Sometime?” Helena had never heard her own voice sound like this before: desperate, beseeching. “Please?”

Myka did not have the opportunity to answer, for Mrs. Frederic at that moment opened the office door. She looked at Helena and Myka, and she said, “Miss Bering, Mr. Nielsen requests that you return to your machine now.”

“Yes, Mrs. Frederic,” Myka said. As she reached the door, however, she turned back once again to look at Helena. Her look was, in its way, as clear a plea as Helena’s words had been, and Helena hoped that it was similar in another way: she hoped that Myka Bering had never looked at anyone in that way before.

When the door was closed, Helena said to Mrs. Frederic, “Thank you. I think. I might have… been about to be foolish.”

Mrs. Frederic cleared her throat. “It is quite apparent to me that you have no eye whatsoever for Myka Bering,” she said. “In any case, that is what I intend to say if anyone should inquire about the matter.”

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original part 2 tumblr tags: Mrs. F is such a shipper, even when she is like 'watch what you are doing you idiot', and sorry it took me so long to get to Claudia, more friends will be showing up too, and as for B&W, of course they can't keep their eyes (or hands) off each other, seriousl,y just picture all this playing out in heightened and saturated Warnercolor, in widescreen, oooh, I might actually die if I saw that


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning: for those who don’t know Pajama Game, some stuff may seem to come out of left field. And for those who do know the movie, some stuff may seem to come out of left field. Basically this story is standing in left field throwing wild pitches. Eyes on the prize, however: more B&W action!

The day of the picnic was impossibly hot, impossibly sticky. And yet not impossible at all: just a normal July Sunday, with the mercury in all the thermometers climbing, climbing throughout the morning and early afternoon… Myka fanned herself with a paper plate as she packed picnic supplies into the car. “Leena!” she called to her housemate. “We have to get going!”

“It’s too hot,” Leena answered from inside the house. “Why do we have to make the effort to go to the park and melt there? Why can’t we just sit on the front porch and do that?”

“It’s _the picnic_ ,” Myka said.

“It’s _your_ picnic. I don’t even work there.”

“It’s your aunt’s picnic too. And you know there’s a strong likelihood she’ll have some of Artie’s home-brewed beer.” Mrs. Frederic was Leena’s aunt. And Mrs. Frederic drank beer exactly once a year.

“Oh, all right,” Leena said. “I guess since I’ve already got the night off work, I might as well go.”

“Nobody would be at the Hideaway tonight for you to make drinks for anyway—it’s _the picnic_. Which we have to go to. Now!”

“Why are you in such a hurry?”

“I’m not in such a hurry. I just… want to go to the picnic, that’s all.” But she was in a hurry. She was in a hurry, because she and… Helena… had been exchanging glances—hot, charged glances—during the three days since their conversation in the office. They hadn’t spoken, but Myka was sure that every look in Helena’s eyes, and the answering looks in her own, would have put this day’s temperature to shame. And the picnic… well, the picnic was the picnic; a lot of people did things at the picnic that they would never, ever do the rest of the year.

So Myka was in a hurry, because Myka thought she just might feel inclined to do something at the picnic, even though she had never been one of those people who did. If Helena Wells was at the picnic, that was, and how would Myka know whether Helena Wells was at the picnic if she did not hurry up and _go to the picnic_?

Leena _finally_ got into the car, and they _finally_ got on the road—Myka wasn’t entirely sure she should be driving, she was that jumpy, but Leena would have driven far too slowly. As it was, Leena kept grabbing the door handle to steady herself and saying to Myka, “What is the _matter_ with you?”

“Nothing is the matter with me,” Myka said. “I told you, I just want to go to the picnic.”

“You have never wanted to go to the picnic like this before. I don’t think you’re interested in the picnic itself at all.”

“I really wish everyone would keep their opinions about that kind of thing to themselves.”

Leena pounced on this. “Everyone? _Everyone_ has been offering opinions about that kind of thing?”

“You know how that factory is,” Myka said. It was weak, but Leena seemed to accept it.

****

Helena had not intended to go to the picnic. She felt she had just begun to receive a minimum level of respect from many of the factory workers, and picnicking with them would most likely halt the upward progress of that line.

“Everyone goes to the picnic,” Mrs. Frederic had informed her.

“Everyone?”

“Yes, everyone. You need to be seen as part of the factory’s community.”

“How?”

Mrs. Frederic had said, “By being part of the factory’s community.”

“I’m not sure what that entails,” Helena had admitted.

“It’s the picnic,” Mrs. Frederic had said, rather mysteriously. “You’ll see.”

What Helena did see, immediately, was that if _everyone_ went to the picnic, there was indeed a reason for her to go to the picnic. Because one particular component of _everyone_ had been looking at Helena like… well, Helena had to concede that she had been the one who asked Myka to look at her. But she had not imagined how that looking would make her feel. It made her want to know how every bit of her skin would feel against every inch of Myka’s, so much; but it also made her want to curl herself around Myka and listen to her speak, learn everything she thought about every topic under the sun; and most of all, she wanted to hear Myka ask every manner of mundane question, such as “where did I set my book down this time,” and she wanted to be the one who answered, “I know where.”

She could not, but did, let herself imagine such things. And because she was weak in precisely that way, she prepared herself, on an oppressively warm and humid July morning, to attend the annual picnic hosted by the Sleep-Tite Pajama Company.

****

Upon their arrival at the park, Myka and Leena first encountered Mrs. Frederic and Jane Lattimer, Pete’s mother. They were unfolding lawn chairs and readying parasols to shade themselves from the merciless sun. The actions made them seem almost like regular people, and indeed, just for today, Mrs. Frederic was simply Leena’s Aunt Irene, not the person who had a mysterious amount of power over the factory and its employees. And Jane Lattimer was just Pete’s mother; she was not Mrs. Lattimer, the third-grade teacher who’d led Myka into her lifelong love of literature. Who’d then become Principal Lattimer, and then School Superintendent Lattimer. Myka was fairly certain that no one would be surprised if Congresswoman, Senator, and then President turned out to be the titles that followed.

Pete’s mother now said, “Myka, I never see you anymore. You should come to the house for dinner. I’ll make Pete come, too, with whichever one of his girlfriends has decided she can put up with him that day. And you bring whoever you’d like.”

Myka glanced at Mrs. Frederic, who gazed back. Myka cleared her throat. “You know Pete doesn’t like to bring girls home to meet you. For some reason, you scare them off.”

Jane Lattimer laughed. “I never scared you off.”

“I was never dating Pete.”

Jane sighed. “I think that’s a shame, but I can’t blame you. My son is impossible.”

“I think Pete’s great, but he’s just… not my type. And I don’t think I’m his, either.”

Leena smiled. “You’re his type. I’m his type. Aunt Irene is his type.”

Mrs. Frederic raised her eyebrows, almost to her hairline.

Leena said, “Oh, Aunt Irene, I’m just making a point.”

Mrs. Frederic said, “Well, don’t employ me for the purpose.” Then she laughed.

Leena laughed too. “I think the picnic has officially begun.”

At those words, Myka started to buzz again. “Who’s here?” she asked, trying to sound unconcerned about what the answer might be.

“Pete and company,” Jane Lattimer said. “His gaggle of girls. Are you _sure_ he’s not your type, Myka? I think you might be able to convince him to drop all of them and settle down.”

Myka said, “If Amanda couldn’t, then nobody can. At least not now. And I’m pretty sure he’s not the one for me.”

She heard Mrs. Frederic say “hm.” She saw Leena look questioningly at her aunt. Mrs. Frederic simply shook her head.

“Come on, Myka,” Leena said. “I want to say hi to the girls. And Pete of course.”

Mrs. Frederic said, “Have him send refreshments over when he gets a chance.”

****

Myka tried to pay attention to the hellos and the hugs between Pete and the girls and Leena, but she didn’t feel nearly as obligated, as she had with Mrs. Frederic and Mrs. Lattimer, to pretend not to be scanning as much of the park as she could see…

“I can tell what you’re doing,” Pete fake-whispered. He waved his hand in a direction. “She’s way over there, with Claudia and Todd.”

Myka looked across the large grassy expanse, and sure enough, there she was, seated at a picnic table near the baseball field. She had a drink in one hand and was using the fingers of her other hand to gesture in the air, and then as if drawing on the table in front of her. Claudia was rapt, and Todd seemed to be equally so. She wore white trousers and a pale blue collared shirt, and even at this distance, she seemed completely unaffected by the heat, or at any rate far less so than any of the rest of them were. Ice cream, Myka thought. She looked like ice cream.

Leena said, “I get it now.”

“Get what?” Pete asked her.

“Why somebody drove like a speed demon on the way over here. Why somebody kept saying ‘I just want to go to the picnic, Leena.’”

“I am ignoring all of you,” Myka declared.

Pete said, “If you ignore me, I won’t hand you a beer.”

“I don’t need one,” Myka said. But as she looked across the park again, she felt her pulse speed up, slow down, speed up; she was far too nervous about this. “Or maybe I do.”

“Here, then,” Pete said. “Take mine. I’ll get another. Because it is high time you had the kind of day the rest of us usually have, once a year.”

“Maybe mine’s just once-a-lifetime,” Myka said.

“All the more reason for you to grab hold of it. Or grab hold of _her_.”

On any other day, Myka would have smacked his arm, told him to shut up, and opened her book in front of her face. Today, she drank the beer, just drank it right down, and said, “I’m going to try.”

She started walking in Helena’s direction. She intended to walk and not stop, walk and not even think, and then figure out what to do when she got there.

At the next table, she saw Steve sitting next to Liam, one of the sales representatives. Steve was gabbing away, getting animated, actually smiling, and Myka could see why: he had an almost empty cup of beer in his hand. Myka did wonder what exactly it was Artie put in the stuff. It was practically a truth serum, turning people into who they really were, or who they wanted to be, just for this one day.

“Hey Myka!” Steve called as she walked by. “Do you know Liam?”

“I do,” Myka said. She supposed she really ought to make at least a little effort to be polite. She stopped and asked, “How’s business?”

“It’s okay, but it’s tough. Mr. MacPherson sets the prices so high, it’s hard to make sales.”

Steve said, “But we make really good pajamas. The prices should be high. And then they should go even higher, so we can get our raise.”

“If the prices go any higher, nobody gets a raise, because no pajamas will sell, and we’ll all be out of a job,” Liam said. Then he added, with a very charming smile at Steve, “Even you, ‘Prez.’”

“But everyone in the industry’s gotten a raise but us!” Steve complained. He was sounding more like his everyday self; he hadn’t seen the smile, or heard the tease in Liam’s voice.

Liam’s smile had lost a bit of its sparkle, so Myka said, “Steve, I think today isn’t a day to worry about the union, or business, or anything else like that. I’m sorry, Liam—let’s go back and pretend I didn’t ask you about sales at all. What were you two talking about before?”

Steve’s skin was already turning rosy from the sun, and Myka’s question made him turn redder still. “Nothing,” he said.

Liam didn’t turn red, but he said, “Just… things.”

“Then go back to that,” Myka said. “I’m going to go talk to somebody about things too.”

Steve looked up at Myka. “Thanks,” he said.

She leaned down and kissed his cheek. “There are other days, too, Steve,” she told him, and she didn’t wait to hear what he might try to say in response.

She focused in on Helena again; she was seeing her in profile, watching her hands, her face, her hair lying against her shoulders, sneaking partway down her back. Helena would sometimes capture that hair in a messy knot behind her head when she was playing mechanic—and Myka always imagined how she would have to wash her hair later to rid it of whatever machine grime her always-dirty hands had transferred to its strands. She had imagined that in great detail.

So immersed in these thoughts was she, so concentrated on her goal, that she very nearly tumbled to the ground when she felt a pull on her elbow and heard Artie Nielsen say, “Myka! I need a volunteer!”

Artie had been a knife-thrower in his youth. He came from a circus family in Russia—at least that was the story he told—and nothing pleased him more than to demonstrate his skill at the picnic. It was exciting to watch, but today was really not the day she wanted to be part of the excitement. She tried to tell that to Artie, but he leaned close to her and whispered, “You’ll be such an impressive tall mark. Harder to keep from hitting you. Please?” And Myka noticed that he looked up and smiled at a lovely older blonde woman, one who smiled back at him… oh.

Myka sighed. “All right,” she said. “But not for too long, okay?”

“It’s _showtime_!” Artie exclaimed, and he dragged her in front of his target. Myka felt a little tremor of nerves when she saw the cut marks from previous throws… some of them right in the middle of the person-shaped outline she was to stand within. “Just practice throws,” Artie said when she reached tense fingers out to touch a particularly deep gash. It was right where her head would be. “I get all the misses out of my system then.”

“Okay,” Myka said. She gulped. She glanced in Helena’s direction. Helena was glaring, and quite possibly swearing, at Claudia.

****

Helena had caught sight of Myka talking to Steve Jinks and the other young man, and she’d been watching ever since, waiting for the right moment to go to her. Then Artie grabbed her for whatever strange demonstration he had in mind, and Helena cursed the opportunity she’d missed by not making a move immediately.

Then she cursed for a different reason: Artie was preparing to throw _knives_ at Myka. “Claudia, what is this nonsense?”

Claudia said, “Don’t sweat it, H.G. He does it every year. I know he comes off as crazy, but he’s really good with the blades.”

“It’s true,” Todd said. “I saw him last year. I’m sure he’s really good at being a floor supervisor, too, but he was like a real circus performer. Like one that you would pay money to see.”

Claudia added, “And _this_ year he’s trying to impress Dr. Calder, so he’ll be extra-precise.”

“Dr. Calder?” Helena asked. Her eyes were back on Myka. Artie had positioned her in front of a large board propped against a tree.

“Yeah. Artie had his appendix out a couple months ago, and she did the operation. And he just about died.”

“From an appendectomy?” A rather large group had begun to gather around Artie, including the sewing room staff, stock boys, maintenance workers, spouses, children… and Helena’s view of Myka was somewhat obscured. She stood up—that was slightly better, but still not clear enough.

“No, from meeting Dr. Calder. I swear she was the only thing he talked about for a week after he got out of the hospital. How he got up the nerve to ask her to the picnic, I have no idea. I think he drank an entire six-pack of his beer beforehand. He was tempted to do it again before we went to pick her up this morning… I bet he’s had a few by now.”

Helena couldn’t see Myka at all anymore, and now, upon hearing that Artie might have consumed more than his share of this quite strong beer, she was not comfortable with that state of affairs. “Come. We must join the crowd,” she told Claudia and Todd.

Claudia said, “I know why you want to, and her name isn’t Artie!”

Helena said, “I am not going to dignify that with a response.”

“H.G., that _was_ a response.”

****

“One! And two! And _three_!” Artie exclaimed, and he let the first knife fly.

Myka flinched a bit, but the tip of the blade embedded itself a good six inches away from her right arm.

He took up another knife. “And one! And two! And… three!”

This one was on her other side, near her head. She looked up at it. It was actually _quite_ near her head.

“Maybe that’s enough,” she said. “I’m not sure I—”

“One!” Artie yelled. He gestured as if to throw.

A flash of light blue caught Myka’s eye.

“Two!” Another gesture.

The flash of color became Helena’s shirt, and Myka looked up from the shirt to see her beautiful face marred with concern. The movement Myka made then was completely involuntary: she reached up with her left hand, with no idea whether she was waving to say hello or trying to reassure her or just aching to make some kind, any kind, of contact.

At that very moment, Artie shouted, “Three!”

The knife edge caught Myka’s upper arm—not badly, but sufficiently to send the blade clattering against the target instead of embedding into it. Artie froze, and Claudia pushed forward to grab the rest of the knives away from him; she thrust them at Todd, who bobbled them for a moment as he caught Artie’s eye. Artie opened his mouth as if to yell, but then he looked at Myka again. He looked to the blonde woman. His shoulders slumped.

Myka just stood there, her own gaze moving back and forth from them to the trickle of blood running down her arm.

Then suddenly the blood trail was caught, stopped, because Helena was there, there and lifting the tail of her shirt to press against Myka’s wound.

“You’re hurt,” Helena said, far too close to her ear. “You’re hurt and it’s my fault.”

“I’m fine.” But Myka was not, actually, fine; she was so much better than fine, because Helena’s arms were wrapped around her and her mouth was right there at her ear and her hair was very near Myka’s face and Myka was going to collapse, or possibly die.

“Let me see,” said the woman Artie had been smiling at. She told Helena, “Let her go for just a minute. It’s going to be all right, I promise. I’m a doctor.”

“Dr. Calder, yes,” Helena said. “Claudia told me.” She did let go then, and as the doctor examined Myka’s arm, Helena raised her voice and said to the crowd, “I believe I just saw Mr. MacPherson arrive. And I believe he would like to convey his appreciation to all of you in some brief remarks, so please, make your way back to the tables nearer the parking lot!”

Pete, who Myka had seen take off running at the sight of her blood, now came back with three band-aids and a bottle of gin. “It was all I could find!” he said when Myka raised her eyebrows at him. “Don’t you have to sterilize stab wounds?”

“It wasn’t exactly a bayonet, so I don’t think we’ll be needing the gin,” Dr. Calder said. “But the band-aids are just fine.” She placed them carefully over the cut that Myka felt was really being made far too much of. It didn’t even hurt, and the only lasting damage from the whole thing would probably be the bloodstain on Helena’s beautiful shirt.

Dr. Calder was gesturing to Helena. “Come here. You can have her back now.”

Pete said to Myka, “You really okay?”

Myka nodded.

Helena said, “I’ll make sure.”

“Okay. Hey, Claudia! Artie! Todd!” he called. They were over by the target, and Artie was hanging his head. Claudia looked like she wanted to strangle him. Todd was standing behind her, holding the knives out in front of him as if he were her butler. “C’mon, you guys, let’s go listen to the big man talk.”

Artie looked mournfully at Myka as he walked by her. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he said.

“It wasn’t your fault at all,” Myka said. “Really. I’m the one who moved.”

“Because of me,” Helena said.

Dr. Calder broke in. “It was an accident. No one is any more at fault than anyone else. Accidents happen.”

“They do,” Myka agreed.

Helena touched a finger to the band-aids. “I don’t want them to happen to you.”

“Your hands,” Myka said.

“What about them?”

“They’re clean.” She smiled at Helena. She had to tilt her head down just a bit, and Helena tilted hers up—and then they were smiling together.

“Leaving now,” Claudia said. “Doc, Pete, Artie, Todd, me, we are moving right along.”

Myka waited until they were out of earshot, then asked, “Does Mr. MacPherson really want to make a speech?”

“He always wants to make a speech. If someone tells him it is time for one, he will be up on a tabletop declaiming before you can turn around twice. And I can tell you exactly what he will say, as well: he will explain that he is a fighter, that business is a battle, and that he will lead you all to victory in that battle because he is, yes, a fighter. He will say this in no fewer than seven different ways, possibly extending to what I believe is a maximum of eleven, and he will conclude by draining the drink he will doubtless be holding. He will then smash the cup on whatever surface is nearest him and roar ‘Onward!’”

Myka watched as Helena acted this out in limited form. “Really,” she said.

Now Helena smiled. “I assure you.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Far too,” Helena said ruefully.

“Does he always bring you in to run his factories?”

“If he wants them to run more smoothly, yes. I’m very effective in the short term.”

“And this one wasn’t smooth enough for him?”

“Apparently not. Though honestly, other than an appalling inattention to basic maintenance and some individual cases of… limited motivation, let us call it, I really don’t see a need for dramatic changes.”

Myka perked up. “Then can we have our raise?”

“I don’t know. James says it’s impossible, but… don’t ask me about that. Not today. I don’t want to argue.” She ran her hands along Myka’s arms. She avoided, clearly very consciously, touching the band-aids.

“We aren’t going to argue,” Myka told her.

“Aren’t we?”

“No. Do you know why?”

“No, actually.”

“Well,” Myka said, and she was running her own hands up Helena’s arms, “since I already know what Mr. MacPherson’s going to say, I don’t think I need to follow everyone else over there to listen to him.”

“I don’t suppose you do.”

“And since _you_ already know what he’s going to say, I don’t think you need to go over there either.”

Helena’s smile grew wider. “I don’t suppose I do.”

“So why don’t you…” she took Helena’s hand… “come over here…” she pulled her behind the target, behind the tree… “with me…” she pulled Helena close, pulled her closer…”and not argue?”

“I’m not arguing,” Helena breathed.

“No. But you are talking.”

“Not anymore.”

They were both smiling when their lips met; Myka knew that they had both known this would happen, and now, she knew that that they both were simply, in that first moment, happy that it was happening. But Myka’s thoughts remained focused on “this is good; this is right” for all of two seconds, possibly three, and then her body was content to continue understanding the rightness as background music, for her mouth and her hands and her _lungs_ had done with understanding; she breathed Helena in, breathed her out, and it wasn’t that this was the picnic, and it wasn’t that she’d drunk the beer, though Helena had too, she could taste it; no, it was the two of them; and whatever it was that had pushed the two of them together was something else, something entirely new.

“I don’t know what to do with my hands,” Helena murmured, at some eventual point, against Myka’s neck.

“You seem to know exactly what to do with your hands,” Myka said. And she did, because they were right at Myka’s hips like they were meant to live there, hot enough to burn right through her sundress…

“No,” Helena said. “No. Because what will happen if I…” and she moved them up Myka’s back, and Myka felt again that she would faint or die or just fly into the air, as they moved up her neck and into her hair, and…

“Stop,” she gasped. “You have to stop.”

“You see?” Helena said. She took her hands away, held them up, as if Myka were holding a gun on her. “I have to stop. But how can I stop?”

Helena, standing there, her hands raised, her hair disarranged from Myka’s own hands, her lips reddened, breathing openmouthed… how was Myka ever supposed to have known that this was who she was meant for? That this was who was meant for her? But now, she knew. “A month ago,” she said, and her own hands were fists, because otherwise she would be reaching for Helena again, “I had no idea.”

“I didn’t either,” Helena said. She dropped her hands, took a step back, away.

“Don’t,” Myka said. “Here.” Now she did reach out. She took Helena’s hand lightly. “It’s hot today. Wait till it cools off a little.”

“I will,” Helena said. “I will do anything you want me to do.”

“Don’t say that if you don’t mean it,” Myka warned.

“I do mean it.”

“We’ll see,” Myka said.

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original part 3 tumblr tags: you can see, right, how even these versions of them would just bend to each other, and there would be no question, but uh oh there's a plot complication looming, but maybe not before they GET IT ON, give me a minute to compose myself here, and we'll see what the next part holds


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When a certain someone asked what this story was going to be, I used the word “swoony.” This part tries with all its might to deliver on that. I want Myka and Helena to swoon for each other SO MUCH. Women should swoon for each other all the time. (I am so tired of not seeing that, I could just scream.) Put this on that side of the ledger, then—it’s not everything, but it’s something.

Helena was truly content to simply spend the rest of the day at Myka’s side. They talked of… well, not _everything_ under the sun, but enough of everything that they found compatibility on some things, disagreement on others, and a sufficient amount of interest to know that they would be able to keep talking for quite a long time.

They sat, hand in hand, and talked to each other; they walked, hand in hand, and talked to others, too. Myka knew everyone, and everyone knew her, and they just as clearly liked her, and for this day, at least, that liking was extended to Helena. Because yes, now, she did see what Mrs. Frederic had meant about the picnic: the usual hierarchies did not exist, any animosities fell away, and the frustrations of production and schedules and costs and sales yielded, simply and easily, to sun and food and alcohol and a general rough-and-tumble bonhomie.

The atmosphere seemed to become even louder, even bolder as night began to fall, but they two grew more quiet. They sat together on a blanket, very near each other, almost drowsy. “I’m very happy,” Helena said. “Are you happy?”

“Yes,” Myka said simply.

“I don’t want this day to end.”

“It has to,” Myka said. “We have to go to work tomorrow.”

“And what happens to us? Tomorrow, that is?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you want to happen?”

Myka sniffed a small laugh. “I _want_ to kiss you whenever I see you in the factory. But then that’s been true since you first showed up here.”

“Has it?” But Helena didn’t need to ask. She knew it was true, because she had wanted the same thing, and more besides.

“You know it has,” Myka said. “You know perfectly well.”

“Stop stealing thoughts from my mind like that. I hoped. I’m still hoping.” She raised one hand to Myka’s face. “It’s a bit cooler now.” Myka nodded, and Helena leaned to kiss her, softly, then not softly, and then her hand moved from Myka’s face to find her body again, to touch her neck, her back, to begin to trace the length of her leg; it was as if she _could not_ , under such circumstances, do anything else.

After far too short a time, Myka pulled her mouth away. “It isn’t _any_ cooler now.”

“No,” Helena had to admit.

“And we have to go to work tomorrow.”

At this, Helena pouted. “It is _five days_ until we don’t have to go to work tomorrow.”

Myka leaned close and said into her ear, “You are thinking about that the wrong way. Try this: it is _only_ five days until we don’t have to go to work tomorrow.”

“ _Only_ five days. Will you kiss me whenever you see me in the factory? I might be able to stand it then.”

“I absolutely will not.”

“I would imagine some committee should rule on that question. As it concerns the workplace.”

“I’m making an executive decision.”

“I thought _I_ was management.”

“I think you don’t really understand the nature of this kind of work.”

“I think I understand it very well.” She kissed Myka, and though it threatened to turn into heat again, it instead became a slow dream of a kiss, one that went on and on, but one from which they both gradually awoke. “Don’t I?”

“Well, you’re all right,” Myka said. “For a superintendent.”

But she looked at Helena just like she had on the day of the grievance, and Helena kissed her again—because she could, because she was in love, because there had never, ever been a day like this one.

****

For Myka, the week crept and raced by. It crept when she was at her sewing machine, when she was eating lunch with Pete and the girls, when she was trying to make sense out of what Steve said in their union meetings (the word “strike” was coming up with increasing frequency). It crept when she was trying and failing to sleep through the insistently hot, steamy nights. But it raced when she saw Helena: It raced on Monday morning, first thing, when Helena, who clearly had been waiting for Myka to arrive, handed her her first stack of pajama pieces, leaning toward her over the pile of fabric, whispering, “Four days now.”

It raced when Helena grabbed her, on Tuesday, and pulled her into the office right at the end of the workday, as everyone else was leaving, and closed the door and pushed her against it and kissed her until she saw stars. It raced on Thursday, too, when, while running a errand for Artie, she completely accidentally noticed that Helena was all alone in the machine shop—so she went in, just to say hello, and ended up doing a bit more than that.

When she got back to her sewing machine, Pete leaned over and said, “Did one of the smokestacks get fresh with you? Because yikes, Mykes, the back of your smock!”

Helena and her hands…

They had made plans already, at the picnic, for Friday.

“Where I live,” Helena had said, “it’s just a room. I can’t bring you there.”

“Where I live,” Myka said, “is a house. And I _can_ bring you there. Leena will be at the Hideaway till late, so we’ll have it to ourselves. Come over after work.”

“What is this hideaway everyone talks about?”

“It’s Hernando’s Hideaway. A nightclub. It’s where everybody goes.”

“And what does Leena do there?”

“She tends bar. She’s very good at it… people like to talk to her.”

“Hm. I think I like talking to you more.”

“That’s good, because we aren’t going to the Hideaway.”

“And you’re sure?” Helena asked, quietly.

Myka wondered later if she should have hesitated, or at least pretended to. Instead she’d said, instantly, “Yes.”

****

Late Friday afternoon, the heat broke. In the evening, Helena and Leena sat on the swing on Myka and Leena’s front porch, Helena waiting for Myka, Leena waiting to get ready to leave for work, as rain—a steady Midwestern downpour—drummed the porch roof, draining off its edges in sheets, lending a slight cellophane blur to the dusk beyond.  A train whistle sounded, damp and lonely… Myka had told Helena that that was one reason she and Leena could afford to live in this house: it was cheap because trains announced themselves all day and all night long. “Don’t they keep you awake?” Helena asked, and Myka said, “Not after a while. I used to get headaches in the sewing room when I started there, and now I barely even hear the machines. You can get used to anything.”

Leena pushed her toe against the porch and moved the swing slightly. “I know you like Myka,” she said.

“I do like Myka.”

“And she likes you too.”

“I hope so.” And Helena certainly did continue to hope so. If Myka did not like her, then Helena’s pathetic panting after her was embarrassing, to say the least.

“You should bring her out sometime. To the Hideaway. It would be okay.”

“I’ll consider that,” Helena said. “But tonight—”

Leena tilted her head. “Tonight you want to stay in.”

“Yes.” Helena wondered, a bit, why she was being so honest. But of course Leena would know, whatever happened.

“Does Myka know that?”

“I hope so.” She was in fact positive that Myka did know that. But that, she did not think it was her place to tell Leena.

“Here’s what I hope,” Leena said. “That you’re serious.”

“I’m very serious.”

“Because Myka is. About almost everything. She doesn’t take things lightly.”

“I know that.”

“I’m sure you think you do.”

“Are you warning me away, Leena?” Helena asked. “What are you trying to tell me?”

They were interrupted by Myka emerging onto the porch. “Leena, are you trying to tell Helena something?” she asked. She stood behind the swing, put her arms around Helena’s neck, leaned down, kissed her cheek.

Helena had been trying to maintain a very stern expression so as to convince Leena that she was, in fact, as serious as she claimed. But when Myka kissed her… how could she not smile? How could she not let her amazement at the entire glorious situation color her features?

Leena said, “Just that you two should come to the Hideaway.”

“Not tonight, I hope,” Myka said.

Helena raised an eyebrow at Leena.

“Because it’s raining like crazy,” Myka went on. “Leena, I wish you didn’t have to go out in it.”

Leena raised an eyebrow back at Helena. She said, “I think anyone who braves the rain is going to want somebody to make drinks for them.”

Helena then felt Myka’s hands, which were resting on her shoulders, tighten, and she thrilled again.

Leena must have seen that, for she stood and said, “I’ll just finish getting ready, then.”

Myka moved around the swing and slid into place beside Helena, who immediately took the opportunity to put her arm around Myka. She leaned over for a kiss as well, but Myka pulled back.

“I can’t kiss you?” Helena asked.

“Not until Leena leaves,” Myka breathed. “And watch where you’re putting your hands.”

“I am,” Helena said. “I am watching exactly where I am putting them. I think you should, too.”

“I don’t need to _watch_. I’m pretty aware of where they are. And I told you, wait until Leena leaves.”

“She knows perfectly well.”

“That is not the point at all.”

“What is the point, then?”

“Once we start, are you going to want to stop? For anything?”

“That is a very good point.”

“Let’s see those hands, anyway,” Myka ordered. Helena tried to present them for inspection. Her right arm was still around Myka’s shoulders, though, so she had to move her body closer to Myka’s in order to stretch that hand out far enough. Myka said, “Sly move. But they do look almost clean.”

And when Myka ran her fingers lightly over the backs of Helena’s hands, then over her palms, Helena thought that it was entirely likely that she would in fact not live through this night.

****

Myka waved goodbye to Leena as she drove away, then stepped into the house. Into the kitchen, where Helena was standing, holding a dish towel.

“I washed my hands again,” Helena said immediately. “Just to ensure your approval.”

Myka smiled. “The other day, Pete said I looked like a smokestack had gotten fresh with me.”

“I would rather be the one to get fresh with you,” Helena said. “May I?”

“You can certainly try,” Myka said, and Helena practically leapt across the room to her. She’d expected Helena to move slowly, like a stalking predator, but Helena was clearly in no mood for slow. The eager press of her lips made Myka almost forget that she had meant to say something in particular to Helena, to bring something up… to give herself a moment to think, she pulled back and said, “I wonder if we have any eggs.”

Helena leaned back a bit too. “Eggs?

“I could scramble them. Or make French toast. Or egg salad.”

“You are _trying_ to do this,” Helena accused.

“Trying to do what?”

“Use non sequiturs to set me on fire.”

Myka laughed. “Is it working?”

“It is the strangest method of wooing I have ever encountered, but: do you honestly have to ask?”

“Honestly, I think there is a lot to be said for anticipation,” Myka told her. “For… drawing things out.”

“Five _days_ ,” Helena said.

“You’re a very impatient person. We haven’t even had dinner yet; that’s why I brought up the eggs.”

“Five _days_.”

“Is that going to be your answer to everything? What if I said I wanted to play cards?”

“Five _days_.” Helena leaned back in Myka’s arms, leaned her head back as if to consult the ceiling.

“Or talk about politics?” Myka ran a finger up Helena’s exposed neck, from her collarbone to her chin.

“Five _days_.” Her voice was a choke.

“Or stamp collecting?” Myka retraced her finger’s path with her tongue.

“God, five _days_.” Now she sounded delirious.

“Or petrified bats.”

“Petrified bats?” Helena’s head tilted back down. She met Myka’s eyes, and now she just sounded confused.

“Gotcha,” Myka said. She thought that “confused Helena” might be her new favorite version, just because of the slight shake of her head, the small step backward, the “I must think about this” cross of her arms in front of her chest. Myka regretted what she had to say next, though, because she would have preferred to take confused Helena upstairs, right at that moment, and unconfuse her thoroughly. “The problem is, there’s something we do need to talk about, no kidding.”

“All right,” Helena said. She clearly could tell that Myka was serious, for she stayed one step away. “What?”

“We didn’t at the picnic, because you didn’t want to.”

“And I ask again: what?”

“The union. The raise. We’re on opposite sides.”

Helena let her arms drop to her sides. “Don’t think of it that way. My job is to make sure the factory runs smoothly and fills its orders, and that it does so at a profit. I’m troubled by your union, and your raise, only to the extent that they would interfere with that.”

“That’s why we’re on opposite sides. Because we’re a union, and to get what we want, what we _deserve_ , we might have to interfere with that.”

“You should know—I mean, I should confess—that in other places, I may have been overzealous in carrying out James’s wishes. And in those places, I would have considered your union, and that boy Steve, and even you, my direct adversaries. I did tell you, I am very effective in the short term. But this is… different.”

“Is it still short-term?” Myka did not know what she would do with any of the possible answers to that question.

“I don’t know. James himself is usually short-term. A board of directors wants to see results; they call on James; James calls on me. Results are achieved. James no longer finds any challenge in the situation; nor do I. And the process starts again.”

“What if I said I love you?” And the possible answers to this question were likely to be even more confusing.

“Five days,” Helena said immediately. When Myka didn’t respond, she sighed. “All right, I see it isn’t funny anymore.”

Myka said, “It wasn’t funny to start with.”

“All right. I would say I love you too.”

It was not a surprise, that answer; Myka had no trouble believing it. What she did not know was what it would come to mean. “Does that make a difference?”

“It has already made a difference.”

“Enough of a difference?”

“I don’t know.” Helena paused. “Do you want me to leave?”

Myka was incredulous. “Leave? I never want you to leave.”

Helena crossed her arms again. “We’ll see,” she said.

“We will. But I can tell you one thing for certain.”

“What’s that?”

She had said what she needed to say.  She had been as plain as she could. They were heading for a collision over the union, she was certain, but… “Five _days_ ,” she said. She took the one step that separated her and Helena. She pulled Helena’s arms apart and stepped between them. She tilted her head down. For just a moment, she was looking at the stern face of a displeased factory superintendent… Myka kissed the displeasure from her mouth, and then, at last, Helena was again the woman who couldn’t keep her eyes or her hands off Myka.

And that woman said, “You seem to enjoy these small-talk non sequiturs, so I should respond with something about ladies’ fashions. Or perhaps halibut.”

“If you do, it’ll be six days,” Myka warned.

“Will it really?”

“No,” she said. Myka knew that since Helena had walked through the sewing room, a little over a month ago, they had both been waiting for this night. And that part was over now. She didn’t know what would happen with the rest of it, but that part was over.

“All right then. Nevermind the small talk, and nevermind the number of days. What if I said I love you?”

“I would say I love you too.” She kissed Helena again. “I would say I love that you washed your hands.” Again. “I would say I love when your hands are dirty.” Again, and again. “I would say I love you.”

“And then I would say, please stop talking.”

Myka nodded. She didn’t say a word as she took Helena’s hand and drew her out of the kitchen, led her upstairs.

****

At last they stood in Myka’s bedroom, side by side next to the bed, looking at it and not each other, vaguely formal, unexpectedly distant. Helena began to feel… they had been so compatible downstairs, everything so perfect, both so clear about their desires, but now she felt as if she should apologize for wanting what she wanted. “I don’t generally do this,” she said.

“I don’t either.” Myka’s eyes darted at Helena the way they had, early on, at the factory, that strange combination of shy and bold, when Helena had had no idea what to make of such a girl.

“But you have? Before?”

“Yes, but I… got caught.”

“Caught?”

Myka shrugged her left shoulder. Helena noticed—she had not before—that a small dark mark on Myka’s upper arm was all that remained from the accident at the picnic. “My parents. They threw me out. That’s why Leena and I live here. I was caught with a girl. Leena was caught with a boy.”

“I don’t understand.”

“A white boy. Her parents had to send her away to be safe. She would live with her aunt, but Mrs. Frederic is… private.”

“I’m sorry. For both of you.”

“Leena’s lucky to work at the Hideaway.  They don’t care there. And I’m lucky to be at the factory—most people there don’t care either.”

“Then I am lucky to be at the factory as well.”

“And besides, I haven’t felt like I… I mean, until you.” Myka glanced again.

“I haven’t either. Until you,” Helena said. “Well, no one I… but James has never cared that there were women. He cares more that _I’m_ a woman, and even that, _he_ doesn’t care about. It matters only when he thinks it will matter to those at a factory.”

“Does it often?”

“Sometimes. I thought it might, here. When I met young Steve Jinks.”

“Poor Steve. He’s… confused, is the nicest way to put it, and it makes him aggressive. But these days he funnels it into the union, mostly.”

“And so we’re back to that,” Helena sighed. She wondered whether Myka was right, if they were in fact squarely on opposite sides, if Myka was seeing clearly and she herself was stubbornly refusing to open her eyes.

Myka said, “I’m sorry. That was my fault.”

“It’s no one’s fault. It’s the factory. It’s reality.”

“There’s all kinds of reality. Tonight we can have a different kind.” She faced Helena, and nothing about her body seemed shy anymore. “Can’t we?”

Helena answered her by dipping her head and kissing the nearly healed cut on Myka’s arm. “Does it hurt?” she asked.

“No. It doesn’t hurt now, and it didn’t hurt then.”

Helena’s hands were at Myka’s hips, just as they had been then. She moved them up Myka’s body, just as she had then.

And Helena thought it was good, in fact perfect, that they had waited, that they had not, as others had, lost their minds at the picnic. The picnic was not real; what they did tonight would be, as Myka had said, a different reality, but it _was_ real. So real and so genuine, so intimate and so warm and warmer and then hot, and the weather _was_ cooler, so the heat was all theirs. It was intoxicating and bracing and everything she had always wanted, to be with someone whom she wanted so badly, who wanted her too, so very badly. Or so well… Myka wanted her so well… she had worried, just the smallest bit, that the wanting, this great freefall into wanting, would turn out to have been more transporting than the satisfaction of having. But for Helena, at least, and she thought, from Myka’s whispers and cries and the way she held Helena so, so tightly, for Myka too, having was better, and then even better, and better still.

Much later—or perhaps it was very very early—they lay together, hands and lips and hips still moving slowly against each other, but tired, so tired. “We should go to sleep,” Myka said. “I don’t want to, but I don’t think I can help it anymore. We should go to sleep.” She kept an arm draped over Helena, but nestled her head into her pillow, pulling the disarranged sheet over her body.

“No pajamas?” Helena asked, teasing.

“We spend all day long with pajamas between us,” Myka said. “Is that really what you want tonight?”

“I never want pajamas between us. Ever. All day long, all night long.”

For what remained of the night, all night long, Helena woke to the sound of train whistles. Time and again, she awakened, and time and again, she turned her head to see Myka sleeping soundly, pajama-less, next to her.

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original part 4 tumblr tags: well, I don't know, overkill?, I certainly made myself quite nervous indeed, with much walking around and muttering, also synonyms were sought, why is 'arm' basically the only word for 'arm'?, (I tried 'limb' out but it sounded weird in context, and HG and Myka would both turn and look at me like 'we are not trees here you hack'), and yet for some reason saying 'hands' nine million times didn't and doesn't bother me in the slightest


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, swooning is all very well and good, but the problem with that kind of falling is, eventually everybody hits the ground. But perhaps not before some gratuitous cuteness… and, you know, the fact of the matter is that being at odds can really put some spark into your swoon, so don’t despair! (That spark and swoon sentence doesn’t make a lot of sense as words, but I hope you see what I mean.) Sparking, swooning, and other things that start with “s” occurred in previous parts.

Myka came downstairs the next morning to find Leena at the kitchen table, drinking instant coffee. “I didn’t expect you to be up yet,” Myka said.

“Ditto,” Leena said. “Or do we not still have company?”

“No, we still have company. She’s asleep. I think the trains kept her awake.”

“Yes, I’m sure it was the trains.” Leena smirked.

“Don’t make fun. This is important to me. She’s important to me.”

“I can see that she is. I just don’t see how this is going to end well.” Leena looked at her coffee. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I can’t really control that, can I?” Myka stretched. Her shoulders were sore, as were her hips. She couldn’t disagree with Leena, not really, but she had also just spent an incomparable night with an incomparable woman, and she was still under that spell, and she wanted to stay that way.

“You could have tried harder to protect yourself from the start.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But it isn’t the start anymore, so you might as well let me enjoy it. Honestly, Leena, it’s too late; I’m a goner.”

Myka heard, from the stairs, “Are you?” And in walked Helena, wearing a slightly large, and outrageously polka-dotted, set of bright yellow pajamas. “I think that might be me.”

Myka stifled a laugh as she went to Helena and kissed her. Leena didn’t bother stifling hers. Myka said, “I’m not sure what to call you, in this getup.”

“I didn’t want to put my work clothes back on quite yet, and of what you had to hand, these in fact fit me best. Honestly, the height of you!”

“I’ve never even seen you wear those, Myka,” Leena said.

“That’s because they’re not mine.”

“Oh?” Helena said. “And whose are they, then?”

Myka put her arms around Helena. “Not like that,” she said. “Months ago, the bobbins got mis-sorted, and almost everybody ended up with the wrong facing color for their batch. Artie caught it right as most of us were finishing up the first set, but it would have taken too long to rip everything out. So we all took that first set home. These don’t even fit me; they’re actually too small. And I sure wouldn’t have picked this polka-dot. Or this yellow.”

“Nor would I,” Helena protested. “I look like a canary.”

Leena said, “I guess my question is, how did this strange spotted canary get in our kitchen?”

Myka said, “Mine is, how did I manage to catch it?”

They both looked expectantly at Helena, who sighed. “All right, I’ll play. Mine is, did you ever determine whether you have any eggs?”

“To hatch?” Myka asked.

“Well… actually, to scramble. I skipped lunch yesterday, so I haven’t eaten since yesterday morning. I may collapse.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that? I really would have cooked last night.”

Leena laughed. Helena did too, saying, “There’s really no good response to that, is there?”

“What? I just said… oh.”

Helena kissed her swiftly. “I mean, I suppose I could say, oh but you did.”

“Please don’t,” Myka said.

“Please stop altogether,” Leena told them. “You’re making my teeth hurt.”

Myka kissed Helena’s cheek, whispered, “You did, too,” and went to the refrigerator to look for eggs.

****

For almost four weeks, everything was wonderful. Myka knew, however, worried and knew and worried some more, that the wonder of it could not last. The factory still existed; the union still existed. Something had to happen.

And then something did.

****

Helena took to escaping the office whenever possible, spending more and more time fine-tuning any piece of machinery she could get her hands on. She could not stand to listen to the ever more frequent meetings between James and the union representatives, for James was simply stringing them along, pretending to be receptive to negotiation. She had known him long enough to recognize his tone. “I am studying that issue” meant “I will never think of this again.” “I will bring that proposal to the board of directors” meant “I will throw that proposal in the bin the moment you leave this room.”

Worst of all, however, “We cannot afford your raise” meant “I am denying you your raise because it is in my power to do so.”

Helena had not managed to gain access to the actual account books yet, but everything she observed indicated to her that the seven and a half cents the union wanted might in fact be affordable. She did not know what prices the company paid to its suppliers, but the factory’s continued need for maintenance indicated that capital outlays were most likely quite low and had been for some time. She spoke discreetly to the sales staff and learned that sales, while perhaps difficult, were by no means significantly lower than those that any other company made. Young Liam was quite helpful in this regard. He in turn asked Helena, shyly and endearingly, about Steve Jinks—he knew she dealt with him regularly, given his position in the union. Steve had apparently given Liam quite the cold shoulder following the picnic, and quite unexpectedly, from Liam’s perspective. Helena used Myka’s word—confused—to describe Steve and his behavior. Liam suggested that once the union business was resolved, Steve might be less confused. Helena wasn’t at all sure that was true… but Liam would have to discover that for himself. It was not her job to supervise the romances, or lack thereof, of the pajama company’s staff.

It was nevertheless her job to supervise the pajama factory and ensure that it continued to operate—and if the workers were as unhappy as they seemed, then that was in fact a problem. And yet James refused to see it that way. He waved her off when she tried to argue that surely there was some way to compromise. It was unlike him, to take actions that seemed so contrary to anything resembling good business sense, and Helena knew that something else had to be driving him. But she could ask him only so many times to be upfront with her without endangering her own position.

So Helena had no idea what kind, or kinds, of problems she was truly facing. She also had no idea how much time she had to work with in which to solve those problems. She wished she could find out from Myka what the union’s plans were, so she might get some sense of when they would act, but that was not possible either, for two reasons: one, she would not ask Myka to break faith with her coworkers. She did not think Myka would do it, in any case, but she would not ask it of her.

The second reason was that when they were together, the last thing Helena wanted to do was talk about the factory. She did not even want to think about the factory when she was with Myka; at those times, the factory was just a place they both went to mark time until they could see each other again. And yet she had to acknowledge, to herself at least, that when they did see each other, the things she wanted to do were so banal: sit with Myka on the porch swing, listen to the train whistles, eat scrambled eggs, talk about love. They seemed sometimes to be in glorious competition to see who could say she loved the other more.

She was thinking about Myka early on a Wednesday afternoon in the office, concentrating all her thoughts on her and on the date they had planned for that Friday night. They had stayed in for all four of their Fridays so far, but on this one, they were to go to the Hideaway. Helena was thinking about that, and about what they would do _after_ that, and she was not paying much attention to the argument between Steve Jinks and James that was playing out over the desk next to her. It was the same one, as usual, with today’s variation being that Steve accused James of not wanting to make a convincing case to the Board that labor needed to be kept motivated, and James assured Steve that when the Board met one week hence, he would most certainly make that case convincingly.

Even Helena, in her distracted, relatively apathetic state, could hear the sarcasm in James’s voice. And if she could hear it, then Steve, attuned as he was to every nuance, ready to jump to offense at any perceived slight, would receive it as if from a bullhorn.

And Steve did. He turned red, redder even than he had appeared with his picnic sunburn, and he said, “That’s fine then. Just remember: motivated.” He didn’t shout it, though, and that worried Helena.

He left the office. He did not slam the door. And that worried Helena even more.

James said, “One day that young man will overstep his bounds, and I shall be able to fire him with impunity. I await that day with gleeful anticipation.”

Mrs. Frederic, who was keeping mainly to herself these days, made a very quiet clucking noise.

That struck Helena as odd, but it took her a moment to realize why. Then she understood: it was odd because it was quiet; she was able to hear it over the noise of the sewing room. Because there was no noise coming from the sewing room.

****

When Myka saw Steve emerge from the office, his face red as could be, she could do nothing but sigh. She wondered if someone else might have better luck with Mr. MacPherson… but who? Steve was the president; no one else could make real promises or accept any agreements. And it was true that they hadn’t had any success with entire committees trying, or any other way of communicating. Part of her wanted to ask Helena if she knew of any way they might make their case more persuasively… but she knew that would be wrong. She didn’t want to use their connection like that, and she especially didn’t want to make Helena feel like she was undermining someone she’d known for so long. Even if they weren’t really friends, Helena and Mr. MacPherson, he clearly had respect for Helena’s work, and she for his. Myka thought that Helena might love her enough that she would help her this way—and that was exactly why she couldn’t ask her for her help.

Steve stopped at her table. “That’s it,” he murmured. “There won’t be any progress until we remind him that labor does the work around here. It’s time for step one. Pass it on.”

He moved on to Pete. “Step one. Tell a friend.”

And so on through the sewing room. After he left, they all looked at each other. “Okay,” Myka said to herself. “Here we go.”

Pete leaned over to her. “I forget what step one was.”

“It’s a slowdown, Pete,” she said.

“Right. Okay. I can do that.” He normally hunched himself over his work, the better to pay attention to detail and keep to the speed Artie wanted. Now he tilted back a little, let his foot drift from his pedal.

Myka did the same, as did the other girls. The room quieted. It was not silent, but clack-clack-clack became clack… clack… clack. The customary hum broke down into distinct buzzes.

Artie, who had taken a late lunch, walked in right as this was occurring. Myka watched him understand it, from his first realization that something was amiss, through his wide-eyed, swivel-headed stares around the room, to, finally, his roar of “What is wrong with you people?”

“Nooooo…. thiiiiing…..” Pete said. “Maaaaay…. beeee…. iiiiiit’s….. yooooooou.”

“Pete, stop it!” Myka said. “This is not a joke!”

“No,” she heard a frighteningly cold version of a very familiar voice say from the office door. “It is by no means a joke.”

Myka turned around to look at Helena, who did not meet Myka’s eyes as she stalked through the room. “It is not a joke. You have a contract, one that was negotiated in good faith with this company. You may not like it now, but as long as it is in force, you will do a day’s work if you expect a day’s pay.”

“And I imagine you all want—and _need_ —your day’s pay,” Artie added.

Pete looked at Myka, looked at Amanda. Kelly and Deb shrugged at each other. They bent their heads back down; their machines picked up speed. Amanda hesitated for a moment, as did Pete. Then they, too, bowed themselves over their work.

Myka needed her day’s pay. Myka needed every day of her pay. But Steve was right: there hadn’t been any progress, and there wouldn’t be any until someone really sat up and took notice of how much work went into filling all those orders for pajamas.

She looked at Helena, who was now deep in conversation with Artie. Helena wasn’t wrong either, but…

Myka let her heart thump nervously, just a few beats. Then she reached decisively over her machine for the next piece of fabric in the pile. She shoved it into the gears under her table and pressed her foot insistently on the pedal, as hard as she could.

First she heard a metallic screech; next, a burning smell rose from her machine, then from others; sparks flew from the wires that connected all of them; and finally, the room fell completely silent as all the machines slowed and stopped.

Pete stared at his and ran his hands over it, as if he might be able to soothe it; then he tapped the pedal once, gently. It didn’t respond.

Helena said, in a voice of chipped ice, “That did not happen spontaneously. Who is responsible?”

Myka stood up. “I am.”

For one instant, Myka saw Helena’s commanding air disappear; her eyes were beseeching. The instant passed. Helena strode to Myka’s table, stopped very close, right in front of Myka, drew herself up, raised her chin—Myka could not help but think, in that instant, that she might tip her head all the way back—and said, tightly but perfectly calmly, “You’re fired.”

And then it was Myka’s turn to release her hold on herself, for the briefest moment. “I am?” she asked. It came out small; she sounded, she knew, as she would have if they had been alone.

And Myka could read the response to that in Helena’s eyes: disbelief. Indignation. Helena clearly thought that Myka’s question meant that she wanted to be treated differently than anyone else would have been treated. “Yes,” Helena said.

And now Myka was indignant, that Helena would think that she wanted, or needed, any kind of coddling, any kind of special status. “That’s fine,” she said. “I haven’t had any time off in years.”

“Get your things and go,” Helena said. It was almost a snarl. Then she turned her head away and raised her voice to the room. “The remainder of you, stay at your tables. I will have this working again within fifteen minutes. Artie, if you would get my toolkit from the office, please.”

Helena didn’t look at Myka again. She pulled her hair back and knelt to examine the machine.

Myka walked away.

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original part 5 tumblr tags: I was aiming for this to wrap up in six parts, and I am still aiming for that, but my aim is perhaps not incredibly true, as there are two set pieces yet to go, so I guess we'll see how the wordifying plays out, and how much making out B&W need to do to recover from this


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then they realized they were being stupid, made out, and lived happily ever after. I mean, basically that is how the story goes down, because it’s a musical that is not West Side Story (hard side-eye to somebody), but we are not quiiiiite there yet because I am overcommitted to filling in the narrative. (Besides, I really feel for Steve, because I have put him into such a sad position, poor baby.)

Late that night, Myka, Steve, Pete, and Amanda sat at Myka and Leena’s kitchen table.

“I can’t believe she did that to you,” Pete said.

Amanda said, “I can’t either.”

“I can,” Steve said with a scowl.

“It’s a shame,” Myka said, “but I have to agree with Steve. Of course I can believe it. She didn’t have much choice.”

Pete said, “She had another choice! She could’ve said, ‘Myka you are not fired.’”

“How? I did what I did. I stood up and said that I did it.”

“That was kinda stupid,” Pete said.

“Something had to happen. It was time for something to happen.”

“It didn’t last long,” Amanda said. “She really did get the whole room up and running in fifteen minutes.”

Myka almost laughed out loud, because on hearing Amanda say those words? She felt _proud_. Of course Helena had fixed the system. Of course she had. Her hair in a knot, her hands… but Myka couldn’t let herself think about Helena’s hands.

“The question is, what now?” Steve asked. “Obviously a slowdown won’t ever work. She’ll just threaten everybody again, and they’ll fold like the cheap pajamas they are.”

“Cheap pajamas,” Myka said. “That’s it.”

“What’s it?” Pete asked.

“If we—or, I guess, you—can’t work slower, then work cheaper. Make cheap pajamas.”

“But we don’t make cheap pajamas,” Amanda said. “Sleep-tites are expensive, well-made—oh. I get it.”

“I do too,” Steve said.

“I don’t,” Pete said.

“What would happen,” Myka said to him, “if you did everything just a little bit wrong?”

“That would be awful,” Pete said. “My pajamas would turn out terrible.”

The other three sat and looked at him.

“Who wants to make terrible pajamas?”

Steve said, “Maybe people who are trying to show management that their work needs to be valued more highly.”

“Oh!” Pete said. “So you mean… really? On purpose?”

“On purpose,” Myka said. “And Steve, in the stockroom, your boys can pack them wrong. Wrong sizes in sets together, wrong colors, patterns, fabrics. Okay?”

“Okay. I’ll talk to shipping—we’ll just see who gets whose order now.”

Amanda said, “And I’ll talk to a guy I know who’s a fabric buyer—they’re not in the union, but I bet they’d help out.”

“Since when do you know a guy who’s a fabric buyer?” Pete asked her.

“Since when do you care who I know? You decided you wanted to date everybody in the sewing room. Am I supposed to sit around pining for you?”

“Maybe?” Pete said.

“Maybe not,” Amanda told him.

“I don’t care if anybody’s pining for anybody,” Steve said. “All I care about is if this works. And meanwhile, we still need to get some decent information about what’s going on in the books. I wish you could’ve done something there, Myka, but I guess that’s off the table now.”

“It was off the table from the start,” she said. “Besides, Helena never had access to the books.”

“If you say so.” He sat back in his chair, then leaned forward. “Access to the books… hey, I think I’ve got an idea.”

“What?” Pete and Amanda asked.

“You’ll see.” Steve sat back again. He looked pleased with himself.

Footsteps on the front porch made them all look in the direction of the door. “Leena shouldn’t be home yet,” Myka said. “The Hideaway doesn’t close for another couple of hours, does it? Or have we been here longer than I thought?” The knock on the door suggested that it was not Leena, though, so Myka went to the door and opened it. She then almost slammed it shut again. “I have people here,” she said instead.

“I just want to talk to you,” Helena said.

“I don’t think we have anything to talk about. And besides, like I said, I have people here.”

“What people?”

Pete said loudly, “People who don’t like _you_ very much, that’s for sure!”

Helena’s expression hardened. “I don’t care if you like me,” she called to Pete. “My job is not to make you like me.”

“You’re doing it perfect, then!” Pete said.

Helena lowered her voice. “Myka, please.”

Myka was not made of stone. Not at all made of stone, and that low note in Helena’s voice, so familiar, so at home in the dark of her bedroom upstairs, called to her, weakened her. “All right. I’ll send them home. You can come in.”

So Helena trailed behind Myka as she went back to the kitchen. Helena stood in the kitchen, beside the sink, as Myka said, “I think we’re done, aren’t we? You all can take it from here.”

“We can,” Steve said. “We certainly can.”

Amanda said, “Is it really all right, Myka?”

Myka looked at Helena. Helena looked back, almost aggressively, for a moment. Then she turned to the sink and started washing her hands.

Myka wanted to cry with frustration, but she said, “It’s fine. Go on. It’s late, and you have to go to work tomorrow.”

Pete stood up. He said, “Hey, H.G. Wells.”

“What?” Helena asked. She didn’t turn from the sink.

“You don’t even _deserve_ to have Myka working for you at that factory.”

“Pete,” Amanda said. It was a warning. She grabbed his hand, started pulling him out.

“Yeah, okay,” he said. “Hey, you want a ride home?”

“No,” she said. “But you can walk me to the bus stop, how’s that?”

“Not bad,” Pete said.

Steve said to Myka, “I’ll keep you posted.” He stared at Helena’s back. “I won’t keep _you_ posted.”

“Wonderful,” Helena said. Then she turned around, caught his stare. “Liam says hello.”

Steve’s hands formed into fists. “Don’t _you_ try to tell me—”

“Go home, Steve,” Myka said. “Just go home.”

When he was gone, Myka said to Helena, “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“All of it. Just don’t. Don’t goad Steve. And don’t come here and think you can just… wash your hands in my sink. Just don’t.”

“Then why did you let me in?”

“I don’t know. It was easy. Easier. I’m tired.”

Helena took Myka’s hands in hers. “Then why can’t we—”

“Helena.” Myka felt weak again, felt like falling, but she said, “We can’t.”

“But why? I was angry today, I admit it, but that was—”

“Please. I know what happened today. And now you need to leave.”

Helena dropped her hands. “You said you never wanted me to leave,” she accused.

“You said you would do anything I asked you to do!” Myka was almost surprised to find herself angry now; she hadn’t been truly angry at Helena before, just upset, with an edge of resentment. It had been easier to think of her as a superintendent, a superintendent who was not also Myka’s lover. Now Myka was looking at her lover, and her lover seemed to want Myka to act like she was not also a superintendent.

They stared at each other.

Helena said, “Why can’t you see my side of it? I still have a factory to run!”

“I _can_ see your side of it! I spent all night explaining to Steve and Pete and Amanda how well I see your side of it! Why can’t you see mine?”

“I am trying to. But why would you _do_ that to me? Why would you put me in that position?”

“Someone had to do something, and it turned out to be me. I didn’t do it _to you_. I just did it. I tried to tell you. I tried, before; you know I tried.”

“But why that? Why would you do _that_? When you had to have known what I would have to do in response.”

“What do you want from me? You sound like you want me to apologize to you. I am not going to apologize for doing something I had to do.” Myka had to hold herself back from moving closer to Helena, from using her height to _show_ Helena that she was bigger and stronger than Helena clearly believed she was. “This is exactly why I knew this whole… _thing_ would be a problem. I tried to tell you that too.”

“This whole _thing_?” Helena tossed her head. “Don’t put this on me. Don’t pretend that I was the only one who wanted this. I am fairly certain that you were at that picnic too, and I am completely certain that at no time did I force myself on you. Or force my way into your bed.”

“Don’t talk about that. I can’t stand to think about that now.”

“Oh, well, if the thought of that, of me, of me in your bed, is so awful to you—”

“Stop it! It isn’t that at all, and if you can’t understand that, you can’t understand anything!”

And Myka waited for Helena to choose: forward or back.

Helena said, “Then I can’t understand anything.”

****

At eight-fifteen on Friday night, Helena had three shot glasses—two empty, one half-empty—lined up in front of her at the bar in the Hideaway. “You’re an idiot,” Leena had said, the minute she walked in and sat down.

“I’m well aware of that, thank you,” Helena had told her. “Now if you would be so kind as to tend the bar, I would like several Scotches.”

“All at once?”

“Alas, I hold my liquor exceptionally well. And I would like things to become a bit blurry.” She had been supposed to be here with Myka. They had been supposed to be here together. “So yes, all at once.”

“I guess it’s your liver, not mine,” Leena said. She pulled out three glasses and poured a shot into each one.

“Why not just a triple?” Helena asked.

“Easier for all of us to keep track this way,” Leena said.

“Fair enough,” Helena said. She drank the first down, felt it heat her throat a bit. Then she drank the second—faster, less burn. Then she sipped at the third.

Now Leena said, “You should eat some peanuts.”

“I don’t like peanuts.”

“Pretzels.” Helena curled her lip at the thought, but Leena said, “Knock it off. I’ve seen you perfectly happy with _whatever_ Myka sets in front of you, so eat a damn pretzel.”

“You’re quite insistent,” Helena said, but she took a handful of pretzels out of the bowl Leena handed her.

“If you get falling-down drunk, and then you actually fall down, Myka will kill me.”

“Why? I am not her concern, and she is not mine. She made that quite clear.”

“I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to be _this much_ of an idiot. You’re doing it on purpose for some reason.”

“Doing what?” And Helena didn’t in fact feel like she was doing anything. Since Wednesday night, she had not _done_ a single thing. She had gone places and said words, altered parts of machines, looked at letters and numbers on paper. But she had done nothing at all.

“Acting like this. Do you honestly think that Myka just… washed her hands of you?”

The reference to hand-washing caught Helena in a net; it made her want to kick her way out. “She made me leave! She said she would never, and then she did!”

“She was angry. Don’t get pouty, or that’s your last Scotch.”

“I’m not pouty. She said that she couldn’t even think about the two of us together. Leena, what does she mean? What can she mean? I can think of _nothing_ but the two of us together. How can we be so… untogether?” Helena wondered if that was in fact a word. She sipped again at the Scotch. She no longer felt any kind of burn.

“I really hope you don’t actually need to ask that question. Because do you remember what I tried to tell you? Right at first?”

Helena thought of that night, tried to step back over the enormous joy, and now pain, of it so as to reach some memory of Leena on the porch. “You told me she was serious.”

“Exactly. She is. About _everything_. Her job, the union, you. And all of those serious things ran into each other at once, so if she’s having a little trouble untangling that mess? I think you could try being understanding about it.”

“But I don’t understand it.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“You are trying to confuse me.”

“No, I’m trying to tell you what to do. Because Myka is a wreck. She’s a wreck, and apparently you’re one too, Miss I-would-like-several-Scotches. And it’s been all of two days.”

Helena drank the remainder of the shot. “If you are trying to tell me what to do, you are being remarkably unclear. Perhaps you could write it down. Right after you pour me another.”

“I’m not sure you could read it at this point. What you need to do is _be understanding_.”

“How can I possibly be anything at all if she won’t see me?”

“She will come around on that front, all right? In the meantime, I think there are probably some things you can do to help untangle the mess.”

“But it is impossible. We are in the situation in the first place because of how impossible it is.”

“Helena, very few situations are really impossible. There’s always a way out.”

Helena wanted to put her head down on the bar and have Leena continue to explain how possible everything was. She turned her head, preparatory to doing so, and in the process got a rapid glimpse of the rest of the club.

She raised her head. “Over there,” she said to Leena. She felt sharp again, which was in one way a shame, but in another… here was a situation that she could affect. “Are my eyes deceiving me? Is that not Claudia, and is she not sharing a rather intimate table with Steve Jinks?”

“Huh,” Leena said. “I had no idea that they… I mean, _why_ would they…”

Helena said, “I think I know. And I think that I will not stand for it.” She stood up, relatively steadily, and began a stalk across the club. She heard a soft “oh boy” from Leena as she walked away.

Claudia noticed her approach first. “H.G.!” she said, excited. “Come sit down! Have a drink with us!”

Helena said to Steve, “What exactly do you think you are doing?”

Steve shrugged. “What does it look like? We’re on a date.”

“I never thought anyone would ever bring me to the Hideaway!” Claudia enthused.

“Does Artie know about this?” asked Helena.

Claudia waved her hand. “He’s out bowling. And Dr. Calder went with him, so he’ll be out for a while. And what he doesn’t know, right, H.G.? Please?”

“I certainly won’t be the one to tell him anything. But my hope is that there will in fact be nothing to tell. Because Mr. Jinks, I believe I understand what you are up to, and I will not let you use her this way.”

“Use me?” Claudia asked. “Use me for what?”

Steve laughed. “You sure didn’t mind it when Myka was using _you_.”

That stung, but Helena said, “That was not what—”

“Wasn’t it?”

“I think you should leave,” Helena said. “I think you should leave before I find it necessary to explain to Claudia precisely how I know that your intentions toward her are in no way romantic.”

“One of these days,” Steve said, “I will punch you out, no kidding. I don’t care if you are a woman. Right now you could fire me if I do it, I know you could, but one of these days you won’t have so much power. And then you better watch your back.” He stood up, said “see ya, Claudia,” and left.

Helena dropped into his chair. She sighed. She would have to leave this town soon, she thought, simply because everyone hated her so.

“Um,” Claudia said. “If you would like to let me in on what just happened, that would be _great_.”

“If I am not mistaken, he wants the books. Plus anything else you will be willing to tell him about management, once you have finished that rather generous cocktail in front of you.”

“H.G., _you_ wanted the books.”

“Yes, but did I pretend to take you out on a date to get access to them?”

“You promised me a hydraulics lesson. That’s kind of like a date. Way more fun, of course, but it’s kind of like a date.”

Helena had to concede the point. She also had to concede that while she did not like Steve Jinks, he was perhaps not the monster she had just made him out to be. He was trying to get his union members a raise. It was a reasonable goal. “There seems to be no way to get everyone what they want,” she said to Claudia. “James, the union, Myka.”

“It’s a bunch of moving parts,” Claudia agreed. “It’s like one of those big presses downstairs in the factory, the ones with the cool sliding panels that let you see the gears. It was so cool when you fixed that one last week. You can fix anything. It’s amazing.”

“Not _anything_ ,” Helena said. Not her problems with the union. Not whatever James’s situation was. And certainly not the wreckage of her relationship with Myka.

“Well, pretty much anything. Once you see how it works, or I guess how it isn’t working. Someday I’m going to be able to do that.”

Helena smiled. “You’re well on your way.”

“I just need to get a better sense of how stuff fits together. You have it all in your head already, but I have to look at all the gears and the pieces and figure it out.”

“Wait,” Helena said. “What did you say?”

“When? The gears and the pieces and you have it all in your head?”

“No, before. You said… moving parts. When I said James, the union, Myka.”

“Yeah, I said it’s a bunch of moving parts.”

“And yet I don’t have it all in my head, Claudia. I don’t. I _can_ fix anything, Claudia. Anything. That has always been true. Once I see how it works, and given the right tools. But I have to see how it works; I have to have it all in my head, and I don’t. Claudia, I need your help.”

“You need the books,” Claudia said.

“I do. And for me to ask again, right after having thrown Steve Jinks out for same? I’m sure I am an awful person. But I don’t think I can fix this without seeing how, or whether, it is working.” She added, “You need to protect your job, and probably Artie’s too, so I will understand completely if you say no. If you throw that drink at me, in fact, and shout it.”

Claudia laughed at that. “I might do that just to see the look on your face. I just might. But… you know, H.G., I trust you. I really do. I think you want to fix it so that everybody’s happy, and I’m not sure that that’s what Steve wants. So okay. I trust you, and I’ll let you into the bookkeeping room on Monday.”

Helena could not imagine it would really work, that she would find anything that could help, but she let herself feel a moment of hope. It would be a step, at least. It would mean she was doing something. “Thank you,” she said. On impulse, she leaned across the table and kissed Claudia’s cheek.

“Aw, that’s sweet of you,” Claudia said. She grinned at Helena. Then she looked up, and her eyes got wide.

Helena heard, from behind her, Myka’s voice. She said, “Yes. That’s very sweet of you, Helena.”

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original part 6 tumblr tags: okay fine, I couldn't pull it off in six, Race you were annoyingly right, but also ella was right in that that last part did basically just get to intermission, but the show moves so quickly and unmotivatedly after that, I forgot that I set out to give the characters an actual reason or two for doing things


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay then. Boom. Done. Happy endings handed out like candy. It’s lengthy, this part, but kind of a lot happens. And if there turns out to be a gaping hole in the plot somewhere? I suspect HG would really appreciate a night’s sleep before it got pointed out. Well, sleep or whatever, you know.

Myka watched Helena stand up and turn around in four rapid, but distinct and awkward, stages. First, she leaned forward and in the process knocked Claudia’s drink over. Next, she pushed herself up from the table with both hands. Then she got one foot tangled with the chair, and finally she swiveled her torso around to present Myka with an expression of something like terror.

“I had this idea it would be fun to drink something out of a pineapple,” Claudia said. “I should’ve thought that through.”

Myka would have liked to laugh: Claudia was fishing pieces of tropical fruit from her lap, Helena was trying to persuade the chair to let go of her foot, and Leena was staring at the tableau with her mouth hanging open. Instead, Myka spoke urgently to Claudia. “I’m just here to warn you that Steve came to the bowling alley not ten minutes ago and told Artie that the two of you are here, that you’re here _together_ , and he’s headed over, out for blood. I’m not sure whose.”

Now Claudia jumped up. “But that’s exactly the opposite of what happened! Steve was here with me, not H.G.!”

“I don’t care what anybody does or who they do it with,” Myka said. She wished she believed it.

Helena said, “But it’s true. I would never… Myka, you must know that I…”

“Oh, save it,” Myka said.

Claudia agreed, “She would never.” Then she looked at Helena. “Actually, why would you never? Don’t you like me?”

“Of course I like you, darling,” Helena said.

Myka sighed. “I don’t care who likes anybody, either. I am just trying to keep the peace.”

Helena snorted. “That is certainly untrue. Keep the peace indeed.”

“No, you’re right; I am not trying to keep any kind of peace with you!”

“I can see that. I could see that on Wednesday.”

They stared at each other. Then Helena wobbled, actually wobbled back and forth. “Are you drunk?” Myka asked.

“That is not your business,” Helena said.

“Well, I sure see why you couldn’t figure out how to stand up. Here I hoped maybe _I_ was having some kind of effect on you, but oh no.” She’d intended it to be mean. Instead it was true.

Helena peered at her. “I believe I can make something of that statement.”

“Make what you want, but get out of here. Drunk or not, you don’t need to have a fight with Artie.”

Claudia asked, “What do I do? H.G. can get away, but I have to go home with him!”

All Myka really wanted to do was turn back time to Wednesday morning. She didn’t want to help solve anybody’s problems—not Claudia’s, not her own. She didn’t want to _have_ these problems. She wanted to go back to being deliriously happy. Helena was standing right in front of her, the slight glaze in her eyes making her look like ice cream again, and Myka wanted her to hold her hands out so that Myka could step between them and go back to being deliriously happy. “You can stay with me and Leena tonight,” Myka said. She raised her voice and said, “Leena, did you get that? That’s okay?”

Leena nodded.

“Let’s make it snappy,” Myka told Claudia. She turned to go, but Helena caught her arm. “Don’t,” Myka said.

“I am trying to fix this.”

“Well, you’re doing a really terrible job so far. You’d better make patching things up with Artie—and figuring out how to keep any of it from being Claudia’s fault—part of it. Honestly, how could you let her get involved in your beef with Steve?”

“I did not involve her!”

“I think I see Artie at the hat check counter!” Claudia said, louder than she should have.

“Go out the back way,” Leena ordered. “All of you.”

In the back alley behind the Hideaway, Helena said again to Myka, “I am trying to fix this.”

“And it really is working out well,” Myka said. She couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

“You could try too.”

“I am. But I’m on the other side.” Myka turned to Claudia. “Come on.”

****

The next day, Leena told Myka, “She did rescue Claudia.”

Myka said, “I don’t care.”

“You really shouldn’t lie like that. It’s a bad habit to get into.”

“I don’t care about that either.”

“Do you know what Steve said to her?”

Myka was tempted to ask “you mean to Claudia?”, but she knew perfectly well what Leena meant. “No, I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”

“I think you should. Steve told her that you were just using her. To get information.”

It was one of the worst things Steve could have said. Even though she’d been so careful not to do that. Even though she’d been on her guard all the time not to hear anything that the union could use, she knew that Helena would be going back over every question Myka had ever asked her, everything she’d ever said to Myka, either in response to questions or just out of the blue. Just out of the blue, even in bed, even when no words were supposed to make sense.

Everything that happened now seemed to be just one more blow, bigger or smaller or somewhere in between, to whatever love they had had between them. Everything.

****

Claudia kept her promise: early Monday morning, she slipped Helena the key to the locked account files. “Be careful,” she advised. “He knows exactly which book goes where. He’s like an eagle, sitting up on some mountainside, and you think he can’t see, but you’re the mouse who’s going to be his dinner.”

Helena said, “It’s all right. I know him. I know how to stay on my guard against him, when I have to.”

“I thought you and he were really good friends.”

“We have been, at certain points. But less so at others. I’ll be fine. You keep yourself out of harm’s way.”

They were holding this conversation in whispers, just outside the office, before the sewing room saw any activity. They did not notice when Artie Nielsen arrived for his shift. They did not notice until he roared, “H.G. Wells, I am going to kill you!”

They noticed then. Claudia turned tail and ran—Helena wondered if she had any idea where she might be headed. Then she turned to Artie and said, “Please do. It would put me out of a great deal of misery.”

This was clearly not the response he had been expecting. He almost seemed to chuckle as he said, “I should have brought my knives.”

“God no,” Helena said. “I beg of you. The machines in this place break down often enough as it is without your causing them puncture wounds.” She was not thinking about Myka’s arm. She was not.

“I was angry on Friday,” he said.

“I understand that you were. But I did nothing to merit that anger.”

“Claudia did. She went out. If it wasn’t you, then who was it?”

“I don’t think it’s my place to say. It is up to Claudia if she wishes to tell you. One thing I can tell you is that I have no interest in your daughter. Not like that.”

“You certainly spend a lot of time with her.”

“Because she is exceptionally bright! She could do so much more around this place than fetch books for James and seek to avoid your wrath.”

Artie huffed. He sounded like a winded, exhausted elephant. “How will I make sure she stays modest if she’s running around with those ruffians in maintenance all the time?”

“I’ll keep my eye on her. After all, I run around with the ruffians in maintenance.”

“I really don’t trust you,” he said. Not accusingly, not with any wrath, just as a statement.

Helena shrugged. “Apparently, no one does.”

“I do,” said Mrs. Frederic, who sailed past them into the office.

****

Helena studied the books carefully, stealthily, on Monday and Tuesday. She covered her tracks, as she had promised Claudia she would. Claudia, strangely thrilled to be a part of the covert action, took to giving Helena strange signals when they would pass each other in the hallway, often whispering what were apparently intended to be coded phrases. Helena considered that it would be quite the irony, or something, if Artie’s suspicions regarding romance were once again aroused.

Helena came to understand the factory’s financial situation in great detail, but she needed to know the union’s intentions in order to formulate a plan, one that would be able to bring everyone’s interests together. To that end, she kept her own counsel until Wednesday, the night of which James was set to address the company’s Board of Directors.

She had not even intended to take action on Wednesday, but Steve Jinks came in late Tuesday to make one final plea to James. When he was once again completely unreceptive, Steve said, “Well, guess what. That’s really it. If you can’t talk them into our raise, then at Thursday’s rally, we’ll put it to a vote. There’ll be a strike then, and what’s more, I’ll be upping the ante: we’ll also be demanding retroactive payment of that raise. You won’t want to see what happens next.”

So. A strike vote on Thursday if matters were not resolved. One more piece to the puzzle.

That afternoon, Helena noticed something strange: the young men in the stockroom seemed to be doing much more hand sorting than usual. She waited until after closing time, and then she investigated: perhaps the sorting machines had broken down? But no, they seemed to be in good working order. Then she looked into some of the boxes stacked near Steve’s workspace. And she found that the pajamas those boxes contained did not match. She found that the pajamas those boxes contained had buttons that were single-sewn, almost ensuring that they would fly off, given any tension or pull. She found that the back stitching on those pajamas was of a different color than the front stitching—just as on those canary pajamas, the ones that she had worn in Myka’s kitchen every morning she was blessed to be there, for four weeks.

She needed to know for sure, and she could not ask anyone who worked at the factory without tipping her hand.

So she gathered her courage and went to Myka’s house.

“What are you doing here?” Myka asked, the instant she opened the door.

“I need your help,” Helena said. She tried to keep her heart from leaping. She couldn’t.

“With what? Did you get Claudia in trouble again?”

“I didn’t get Claudia in trouble in the first place!” She tried now to keep herself under control. Under all kinds of control, despite the fact that Myka was standing _right there_. Standing right there, looking even more beautiful than ever, snapping words at Helena in the way she always did. “I need you to tell me something about the union. About what is happening at the factory.”

“Are there any good reasons for me to do that?”

“Yes,” Helena said.

“I’m waiting.”

“I can’t tell you the specific reasons. I am trying to resolve the situation, and I am trying to be understanding and not put you in a difficult position. But I find that those things are in conflict. I need you to trust me, Myka.”

“I don’t know if I should.”

“If you didn’t, you would be a member of a very large club,” Helena said. “Here is what I can tell you: You set this chain of events in motion with what you did last Wednesday. If you hadn’t done that—well, you and I might be happier, but the overall situation would be worse. That is the best reason I can give you: that I have come to appreciate what you did. I still wish we were happier, but I see the importance of what you did.”

“I wish we were happier too,” Myka said. “I miss… being happy.”

“So do I.” Helena very nearly dropped the box of pajamas in order to reach out to her. For just a moment, she thought Myka might want that, might respond to that—but then something changed about her demeanor. “Hi, Steve,” she said. Steve Jinks walked up onto the porch, and Helena clutched her pajama box tighter. If he saw that it was his…

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Myka told him. “Go on in; Pete and the others should be here soon. She’s just… trying again. You know she’s stubborn.”

“Okay,” Steve said, but he sounded skeptical.

He did go in, though, and Helena said, “Thank you.”

“You have to leave now.”

She murmured, “Just tell me this: is there sabotage occurring?”

“What? No, those machines have been breaking down for years.”

“The pajamas, Myka. What is being done to the pajamas?”

Myka looked down, then up. “Everything you can think of.” She glanced back into the house, then leaned forward and pressed a hot, sweet kiss onto Helena’s cheek. “Don’t let me down, Helena.”

“I won’t,” Helena said. “I promise.” She returned the kiss, wanted more, almost, again, dropped the box and reached. But now she knew what she had to do. Now, she hoped, she could put all the gears together.

****

The Board was to meet on Wednesday night at eight o’clock. At six o’clock, Helena, who had staked out the office all day, finally caught James alone, gathering his notes. “What do you need, my dear?” he asked. “There’s a dinner before the official meeting, you know. I must be on my way.”

Helena shook her head. “You aren’t going to the dinner or to the meeting.”

“I beg your pardon? Then who will make the doubtless breathtaking case that this scruff of a union deserves a raise?”

“I will. And I will in fact make the case, because otherwise, James, a strike will begin on Friday. No one wants a strike.”

He waved a hand. “They may strike away, as far as I am concerned. My work here is substantially done… as is yours, come to think of it. So no, I don’t think you will be addressing the Board in any capacity.”

“Answer me one question, James,” Helena said.

“And what is that?”

“Why did you keep the real books? You should never have kept those. Never. If you want to lie convincingly, the lie must be all there is.”

He crossed his arms. Clearly he had not anticipated that she would investigate so thoroughly—that she would care at all, in fact, to determine the actual situation. “The truth will out, eh?”

“Usually. Certainly this time.”

“I suppose I wanted to preserve some vestige of ethical defensibility, even if only in my own heart. It was obviously a monumental error.”

“What I genuinely don’t understand is why you needed so much money. You have been pocketing that raise, that one they think has been denied them, for months now. Haven’t you done well enough over the years? Why would you ever need that much?”

“An old story, I suppose: One hand of cards, then another. One race at the track, then another. One large gentleman asks for his money back, then another.” He shrugged.

“How much do you owe?”

“I’m very close to even. Very close. It’s why I don’t care about the strike. What happens to this factory is unimportant to me now, and it should be unimportant to you too. It’s time for us to move on.”

Helena shook her head. She said it out loud for the first time: “I don’t want to move on.”

James sat down at his desk. “Really? Because of that girl?”

“That girl, other girls, men, women, this factory. And I suspect that once I do speak with the Board, you will not be as readily available to me as an employer.”

“Let me get away, Helena,” he said. He never called her Helena. “Let me pay my debts and disappear. For old times’ sake.”

Helena thought about how he had, for a time, been the only person who accepted who she was, cared only for what she could do, what she could accomplish. She thought about how that had put her in a position to do the same for Claudia, for others who would come after her.

“All right,” she said. “Leave now.”

****

Myka applauded along with everyone else as Steve thundered to the crowd, “And this strike will finally, _finally_ show those fat cats in management who really does the work around here! We’ll get that raise, and we’ll get that retroactive pay too, yes we will! A yes vote on your ballot is a vote that says ‘I work hard!’ It’s a vote that says ‘I deserve respect!’ It’s a vote that says ‘seven and a half cents!’”

His voice got quiet, almost sneering. “And one of those fat cats is here right now. She thinks she can change our minds. She thinks she knows what is what. What are we going to say to that, union?”

“I work hard!” they roared.

“And what are we going to say next?”

“I deserve respect!” came louder.

“And at the end of it all?”

Loudest of all: “Seven and a half cents!”

Myka did not envy Helena having to get up on that stage. She did not know what she was going to say. She crossed her fingers and hoped.

Helena was holding a box of pajamas. She held it by her side, and she began quite earnestly, saying, “You do work hard. I of all people know that. You must know that I work hard as well.”

Myka heard murmurs of “that’s true” and “the machines work” and “decent workday, anyway.”

“And you must also know that I respect you.”

A cry came from very near Myka, sounding very like Pete. “Then where’s our raise?”

“That is what I am here to tell you,” Helena said. “The Board has decided to award you your raise!”

A moment of stunned silence was followed by a joyful bellow the likes of which Myka had never, ever heard.

But Helena was still speaking into the microphone. “There is one condition. One condition. Please, there is one condition. You must give up the demand for retroactive pay. You must. I have a box of pajamas in my hand.” She held it up. “I have a box of pajamas made and packed this week, and ladies and gentlemen, I think we all know what I will find if I open this box and inspect the pajamas. I think we all know that what I will find will be something that must be dealt with harshly, yet the Board is prepared to forgive all of that. If we are to move forward together, each side must give a bit. Please.” She turned to Steve, who was clearly beginning to fume again beside her. She extended her hand to him. “Let us make an agreement, Prez.”

 _Take it_ , Myka pleaded silently. _Take it, take it, take it._

Steve waited what seemed an interminable length of time. He shook his head at Helena. Then he reached and took her hand.

Myka would not have been surprised if the skies had opened and rained confetti.

She looked to her right to see Kelly hugging Pete. “This is great news! I can take a class in the summer term now too! I really will be a veterinarian someday!”

Pete hugged her, then turned to Deb. “Isn’t this great? We can go out more often now!”

Deb said, “Actually, it’s great for you guys, but I have better news—at least for me. I got a new job! I’m going to be a saleswoman!”

“Selling pajamas?” Pete asked.

“No! That’s the best part! Pharmaceuticals!”

“I don’t know what that word means.”

Deb said, “That may have something to do with the problems in our relationship.”

“Well,” Pete sighed, “I’ll miss you, but congratulations anyway. And I was just kidding. It’s a kind of car, right? A Chevy Pharmaceutical?”

Myka laughed. Genuinely, hugely, for the first time in over a week.

“I like hearing that.”

It was Helena.

And Myka smiled at her. “I should have believed you when you said you’d fix it.”

Helena said, “I don’t see why. We were at odds. You were right. And I was not seeing the whole picture _as_ a whole picture—I saw you and me, and I didn’t understand that that needed to fit in with the rest of it. You did. I’m sorry it took me so long to understand—to be understanding about—how much of a problem that would be.”

“It’s all right,” Myka said. She hoped that eventually it really would be. “I guess… I’ll see you at work tomorrow, then. Everybody’s happy—we get the raise, you get to use the money you save on retroactive pay to take care of the sabotage without punishing anyone for it. Though it _was_ only a week. I’m not sure how much damage we really did.”

Helena said, “There is a longer story attached to that particular issue, and I promise I will tell you that story later. But also: That compromise I announced onstage was not the entire design for repair of the situation.”

“Okay. What was? Or is?”

“It starts with our not seeing each other at work tomorrow. At least, not as usual. Because here is the first part of the plan: You don’t come back to work at the factory.”

Myka stared at her. “I can’t have my job back?”

“You don’t really want that job,” Helena said intently. “I know it. You told me, many times, that that is certainly not what you dream of doing.”

“I may not want that job, but I _need_ that job.” Myka was shaking her head. She was already going to be short on the month’s rent, and she had no idea what she would do, or how long she would have to look, or—

“Not anymore. Not necessarily.”

“What do you mean?”

“Here is the rest of the plan. If you don’t like it, then all right, you can come back to work at the factory, and that will be fine. But herewith, I think all the moving parts are in place.” Helena took a deep breath. “The Board has suggested that I step into James’s position. With that comes quite a nice raise in salary. I should be able to afford a quite decent place to live—a place where two people might, in fact, live comfortably. There might indeed be sufficient cushion in that salary to also provide, simply as an example, a college education. To someone. Who might have decided she would enjoy living in a quite decent place where two people might live comfortably. Then, perhaps, a room would become available in a small house by the railroad tracks. Said room would need to be occupied, to preserve the privacy of one Irene Frederic, and thus if everyone involved is amenable, might be taken by a young woman named Claudia Donovan, who is perhaps a bit old to be told that she is dressing like a lady of the evening no matter her garb. A young man who works at the factory who respects her intelligence might then feel more free to speak up and declare his intentions under those circumstances. And then, further, a floor supervisor named Arthur Nielsen might discover that his life, while quite full of work and friends and the like, would be sweeter with companionship. And he might turn to a certain doctor of his acquaintance to provide same.”

Myka could do nothing but stand in front of Helena, breathing and blinking. Her heart was beating, too, she was pretty sure, but any voluntary movements seemed to be out of the question.

Helena smiled. “Think about it for a while. But as I said, all the moving parts are in place.”

“No, they aren’t,” Myka recovered enough to say. “For example, what does the person who goes to college do when she’s finished with college?”

“Ah, sorry, I did leave that part out. First, I should say, whatever she wants. But second, I should also say, having spoken with Pete’s formidable mother, that this school district tends to find itself in need of teachers of literature on a quite regular basis. And that college graduates who are held in Pete’s formidable mother’s high esteem are likely to be considered favorably for such positions. Does that take care of things?”

“In part,” Myka said.

Helena rolled her eyes. “Oh, seriously, what else could there possibly be?”

“What about Amanda?”

“What _about_ Amanda?”

Myka said, “She wants Pete to settle down with her.”

Helena laughed. “I’m fairly certain I can’t fix Pete.”

Myka went on, “And what about Steve and Liam?”

Helena made a sound that was almost as high-pitched as a giggle. “Are you joking? Liam is adorable. If Steve isn’t willing to fix that situation by himself, I don’t think he deserves Liam. Well, I don’t think he deserves Liam anyway. Steve can be a nasty little character when he’s of a mind to be.”

Myka touched Helena’s chin. “You can be a nasty little character too, you know.”

“All right. I am at your command. Steve! Come down here!” she called.

“What do you want? We’re not pals just because of a raise.” But he hopped down from the stage anyway.

“We are not pals at all, I assure you. I would like to tell you that I was sincere when I informed you that Liam sent his regards. I really think it would be wise of you to convey yours to him. In person perhaps.”

Steve looked like a stubborn little boy as he said, “No. What will they think at the factory?”

Helena said, “ _I_ will be running the factory.” She leaned over and kissed Myka’s cheek. “What do you think they will think? Rather, what do you think will be acceptable for them to think? Just talk to him, Steve. That’s all. Start with that.”

Steve stared at Helena. Then he said, “I don’t understand you at all.”

“Join the club,” Myka told him. “But Steve, I think she’s right. You’re happy tonight. You should keep on being happy.”

He faltered. “I don’t know.”

Myka said, “Think about it. Or no, actually, don’t think about it. Thinking about things too much gets us all in trouble. Except this one. She thinks about things, and we get a raise, Claudia gets to wear what she wants, and Pete’s mom gets a daughter-in-law.” She turned to Helena. “Right?”

Helena sighed. “Fine. I’ll see what I can do about that last as well. But Steve, I have done my part for you. Myka is my witness.”

“Let me see your hands,” Myka ordered. “If they’re dirty, you can’t swear to anything.”

“ _You’re_ the witness, not me.”

“Let me see your hands,” Myka repeated.

“Clean!” Helena trumpeted, holding them up. “I did have hopes.”

Now Steve said, “I don’t understand either of you at all. Even down to the words you say.”

“Liam,” Helena said.

“Liam,” Myka agreed.

“Fine,” Steve said, and now he did smile. “I’ll… go say hello. If only to make you leave me alone from now on.”

When he had disappeared into the crowd, Helena said, “It’s a start, you must admit.”

Myka nodded. “It’s a good start.”

Helena said, “And what about us? Can we… make our start? Our restart, that is?”

“ _We’re_ not pals just because of a raise,” Myka said.

“I certainly hope not. Neither pals nor because of the raise.”

“Then why? I think I need to hear you say it.”

“Five days,” Helena said. “No, in this case, eight days. Eight awful days. I know we will fight, going forward. I feel certain that we will fight. But to be estranged from you? I don’t want that ever again, because I love you.” She fidgeted, shifted the box of pajamas she still held. “I might need to hear you say it as well.”

“No days,” Myka said.

“What?”

“No days. Zero days. That is the number of days between now and when I want you to come home with me, because that is the number of days between now and when we don’t both have to go to work tomorrow.”

Helena held the box of pajamas now over her heart, as if to ensure that that heart stayed inside her chest. “Does that mean you approve of the plan?”

Myka moved closer. “I love you. What do you think I think of the plan?”

Helena said, “It _is_ comprehensive.”

Myka said, “There’s just one small detail.”

And Helena’s face fell. “What?”

“Well, look at what you’re doing. There are pajamas between us,” Myka pointed out.

“Not for long,” Helena said. She dropped the box and stood still, and Myka understood: she had a choice. Forward or back.

“Now it’s comprehensive,” Myka said. She put her arms around Helena. They were finally smiling at each other again, finally smiling as they kissed again, just as they had at the picnic, and Myka wished she knew how to dance, because she wanted to lift Helena up, be lifted up by her—but then, that was happening, just from their lips moving against each other. She wanted to be able to sing, because that might be the only way to give any kind of voice to their happiness—but maybe their happiness didn’t need a voice, no singing, no talking, just kissing again and again and again, again trying to outdo each other, each trying to show the other that she loved her more.

And they lived pajama-less ever after.

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original part 7 tumblr tags: I have to go listen to a soundtrack album now, because it is awesome, although not all of it really matches this story, but the love songs mostly do, and that is because B&W are swoonily in love with each other, and always will be, end of discussion


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